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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 












































SOCIALISM 


Being the reprinted Fourth Book of a larger 
work entitled The Individual and Society, 
originally published in 1915. 


j 

By 

WILLIAM ARMSTRONG FAIRBURN 


The Nation Press, Inc. 
20 Vesey Street, 
New York 




.f* 

\<f > 6 

(yp^ 

Copyright, 1920 

By William Armstbong Faibbuen 
All rights reserved 


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MAh -3 1920 


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To 

My Mother 








CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 

I 

Evolution and Revolution 

1 

II 

Evolutionary Human Progress 

10 

III 

The French Revolution and Social 



Evolution .... 

16 

IY 

Anarchism and Nihilism 

25 

V 

Anarchism, the Creed of Human 



Chaos. 

36 

VI 

Radicalism, Rationalism and 



Democracy .... 

45 

VII 

Communism—Utopian Socialism 



of Old. 

52 

VIII 

Communism—Owen’s System of 



Social Reconstruction 

63 

IX 

French Communism—Saint-Simon 



and Fourier .... 

69 

X 

Communism, Equalitarianism and 



Democracy in America 

76 

XI 

Inequality of Man—Nature’s Re¬ 



pudiation of Socialism 

89 

XII 

Socialists and Socialism 

97 

XIII 

Social and Industrial Evolution . 

109 

XIV 

Socialism and Class Distinction 

120 

XV 

Socialism and Competition 

131 

XVI 

Socialism and Public Ownership . 

139 

XVII 

Socialism as Unethical . 

148 

XVIII 

Syndicalism. 

157 

XIX 

Ethical Individualism . 

165 





















PREFACE 


T HIS book is the reprinted fourth and last part 
of a larger and more complete work published 
in 1915 under the title The Individual and 
Society. It was written in the early Spring of 
1914, proof-read during the month following the 
outbreak of hostilities in Europe and first printed 
in the Winter of 1914-1915. 

In the Introduction to The Individual and 
Society the author expressed the hope “that what¬ 
ever the work lacks in the atmosphere of the study 
may be compensated by its practical reasonable¬ 
ness; for it was written in the early morning hours 
of days spent in the factory, workshop and office. 
The viewing at close hand of the world-old 
struggle going on in all mankind of every degree 
of enlightenment, makes one eager to penetrate 
the ‘whys’ and ‘whithers’ in the hope of finding that 
humanizing element which will pull together all 
the extremes of life into a sane, happy middle 
course.” . 

The original work consisted of a series of essays 
divided into relatively short chapters. In reprint¬ 
ing an attempt has been made to give each chapter 
a general subject-heading, without making any 
change in either the text or the chapter divisions. 
An index has also been added to facilitate reference. 

Socialism is as old as human record, and all the 
modern social theories have their prototypes in 
the far-away past. Bolshevism is not mentioned 
by name in the following pages, but its principles 
are thoroughly discussed, as are all the most im- 


PREFACE 


portant phases of the ever-present revolutionary 
social movement that seeks to attain to human well¬ 
being (happiness and prosperity) by the humilia¬ 
tion and enslaving of the individual and the cruci¬ 
fixion of virile and spiritual manhood. 

Notwithstanding the distressing conditions in the 
world to-day—the aftermath of the most horrible 
and senseless war of history—evolution continues 
the great work of Cosmic Creation, and the world 
journeys onward, slowly but surely, toward its 
predestined goal. Man is progressing and be¬ 
coming more and more susceptible to and cognizant 
of truth, more and more free, more and more manly 
and spiritual. Gradually out of the centuries is 
rising the individual—supreme, conscious of his 
divinity. No longer looking toward heaven with 
veiled eyes, but with feet planted firmly on the earth 
and looking the universe full in the face, he claims 
his birthright as the Son of God, a distinct entity 
and personality peculiarly endowed for service in 
the world and actuated by that great Cosmic re¬ 
ligion which demands loyal co-operation with his 
fellows in the work of the world, and a life in loyal 
harmony with the will of God—with universal, 
ethical and spiritual law. 


CHAPTER I 


Evolution and Revolution 


E VOLUTION can be defined as that series 
of persistent changes operating under nat¬ 
ural law; or that unfolding process of for¬ 
mation which involves continuous progress from 
homogeneous to heterogeneous structure, and from 
the single and simple through development, to the 
more diverse and manifold in quality, power or 
function. 

Revolution is a word of many meanings, so diver¬ 
sified that a definition applicable to all the phases 
of thought which it attempts to express, is impos¬ 
sible. The word is derived from the Latin and 
originally meant to roll back or to turn around 
backward; but in general usage it describes rota¬ 
tion or that act of revolving around a fixed point 
or line, returning to a point before occupied or 
relatively the same. The word, therefore, as used, 
covers rotation in any direction, but today this is 
only a part of its meaning. Revolution is very 
generally used in these days to describe a total 
fundamental or radical change, or an abrupt cata¬ 
clysmic mutation. The word may picture to us 
hideous revolts with barricades, conflagrations 
and assassinations; or merely accelerated steps and 
rapid transformation in that steadily unfolding 
and developing law of nature, which we term 
Evolution. 


1 


2 


SOCIALISM 


“Revolution” was used to describe the great 
economic changes following the invention of the 
printing press, steam engine, power loom, the dis¬ 
covery of America, etc. It also depicts great 
peaceful transformations of society, such as the 
disappearance of slavery in Europe, which was 
brought about so imperceptibly that no great 
notice or publicity was given to it. It describes 
such turbulent cataclysms as the violent rebellion 
in our own country, where the abolition of slavery 
resulted in four years of devastating, terrible war¬ 
fare and the loss of a million men and many billions 
of dollars. The word Revolution has many shades 
of meaning between the extreme of bloody strife, 
on the one hand, and the transformations accom¬ 
plished peacefully but yet effectually and perma¬ 
nently, on the other. 

If we use the word Revolution to refer to social 
changes, the same word should be applicable to all 
of nature’s processes. The violent thunderstorms 
as compared with the normal, gentle cycle of 
evaporation, condensation and depositing of moist¬ 
ure as rain; the geological cataclysm such as an 
earthquake as compared with the inappreciable 
adjustment of the earth’s crust. But after all is 
not Revolution merely descriptive of some phase 
of Evolution, that is of such an intensity in rela¬ 
tion to the time factor, that our finite minds can 
perceive it? 

Marx defined Social Revolution as “a more or 
less rapid transformation of the foundations of the 
juridical and political superstructure of society 
arising from a change in its economic foundations.” 


SOCIALISM 


3 


We need not accept Marx’s definition in toto, for 
his schools carry the definition to the point where 
they differentiate between Social Revolution and 
Social Transformation, and maintain that reform 
can never be a revolution. Again, certain leaders 
of the Marx School of so-called Scientific Socialism 
do not consider, as do many other Socialists, that 
the application of force is necessary to promulgate 
a revolution; moreover, they do not consider that 
every reform must be peaceful and every revolu¬ 
tion an armed and violent revolt. Marx in a 
speech at Amsterdam said, however: “In most 
European countries force must be the lever of 
revolution, and to force we must appeal when the 
time comes.” Marx generally talked and wrote of 
a peaceful evolution; but like his class gener¬ 
ally, if he could realize his ambitions quickly by 
force and violent revolution, he was quite willing 
to assist the slow-moving universal law of evolution 
and endeavor to effect in a few days, what nature 
would, by her sure working cosmic laws, take cen¬ 
turies to accomplish. Leaders in Social Movements 
have to learn the great truth that evolution and 
not man-made revolutions lead to lasting good. 
Man must be fitted for a higher plane before he 
can reach and hold it. 

The world never stands still. Its accepted beliefs 
and institutions are constantly changing. All new 
thoughts are more or less revolutionary; they are 
called forth by that law of eternal progress which 
we call Evolution. If the application of the 
thought to life materially disturbs our views or 
behavior, we may call it revolutionary, but in the 


4 


SOCIALISM 


true fundamentals of life, Evolution and Revolu¬ 
tion are one and the same. 

Social Evolution by violence is revolt and war. 
It is opposed to all laws of universal progress and 
no promulgation of any eternal verity or cogent 
ideal by brutal force is possible. The greatest ad¬ 
vocates today of Social Revolution will fight only 
with the ballot and never consider the rifle and 
dynamite. 

Such writers as Kautsky of the Marx School of 
Socialism, differentiate most positively between 
Social Reform and Social Revolution. We are told 
that measures, which seek to adjust the juridical 
and political superstructures of society to changed 
economic conditions, are reforms if they proceed 
from within the ruling class, whether given freely, 
secured by the pressure of the subject classes, or 
conquered through the power of circumstance. On 
the contrary those measures are the result of revo¬ 
lution, which proceed from the class that has been 
economically and politically oppressed, which has 
captured political power and must, in its own inter¬ 
est, transform society. Such doctrines preach and 
develop class consciousness, foster class hatred, and 
are opposed to the obliteration of social boundaries, 
the elimination of which is demanded by evolu¬ 
tion steadily operating through education, ethics, 
political freedom and equality of opportunity. 
Social reform is in harmony with the universal law 
of evolution. The class lines of demarcation are 
rapidly vanishing. The proletariat of today is the 
Bourgeoisie of tomorrow; in one generation the 
son of the humble peasant becomes, through sheer 


SOCIALISM 


5 


merit, the leader of thousands. The printing press 
has done much to eliminate class distinction, and 
this invention alone liberated a power greater than 
that of all the despotic autocracies the world has 
ever known. 

The agitators who dwell on class distinction are 
blind to the fact that today the world lies open be¬ 
fore any son of toil; and ambition, industry, integ¬ 
rity and right living demolish all barriers of class. 
After all, the world is realizing more and more 
that antiquated class distinctions are only imagin¬ 
ary, traditional beliefs. The weaknesses of Feud¬ 
alism, the need of wealth by the aristocracy, the 
rise of the Bourgeoisie with its power gained in 
commerce and industry, the development of true 
altruism in man, and the increased opportunities 
for the acquirement of knowledge, have all tended 
to level the Mediaeval classes of society and to mix 
the blood of old time aristocrats with the energetic 
strain of the moral and dominant peasant blood. 

In mediaeval days, many a man of humble birth 
was Knighted for making his King a loan, for 
establishing an industry, or amusing his Monarch. 
King Henry VIII of England, while squandering 
the lands wrested from the Church of Rome, cre¬ 
ated Bourgeois landlords by wholesale, lifting up¬ 
starts into an aristocracy that even then was more 
Bourgeois than Feudal,—England’s Civil Wars 
having killed off most of the scions of the old fam¬ 
ilies. In the so-called proletariat class there is a 
dominant power that will revolutionize the world, 
not by anarchism, violent revolution, or the prac¬ 
tice of socialistic doctrines, but it will come by the 


6 


SOCIALISM 


elimination of class consciousness and by the grad¬ 
ual improvement and development through true 
education. There may be revolutions or very per¬ 
ceptible steps in evolution, but true progress will 
come from the merging of classes into each other, 
and not from upheavals, with the supplanting of 
one despotic class authority by another equally 
despotic and intolerant. No man can fittingly fill 
a position of leadership until he has been educated 
and equipped to creditably and acceptably perform 
the duties of the position. The proletariat must be 
trained to efficiently and gracefully occupy a posi¬ 
tion of responsibility and authority before he can 
rightly expect to realize any ambition he may 
possess along these lines. 

Not many years ago the average proletariat was 
so low that even leading socialists shuddered at 
times to think of the practical outcome of the theo¬ 
retical doctrines which they taught. Rodbertus 
wrote in 1850: “The most threatening danger at 
present is that we shall have a new barbarian in¬ 
vasion, this time coming from the interior of society 
itself, to lay waste custom, civilization and wealth.” 
Heinrich Heine wrote: “This confession that 
the future belongs to the communist, I make in 
sorrow and greatest anxiety. This is in no way a 
delusion. In fact it is only with fear and shudder¬ 
ing that I think of the epoch when these dark 
iconoclasts come to power; with their callous hands 
they will destroy all the marble statues of beauty, 
etc.” The proletariat will never by revolution or 
evolution come as conquering vandals into any 
power of domination, laying waste the culture and 


SOCIALISM 7 

beauty of the world; neither will true art ever be 
suppressed by barbaric ascetics. 

The aristocracy of hereditary feudalism, autoc¬ 
racy, oligarchy, or any other authority of heredi¬ 
tary privilege will pass. Today the Bourgeoisie is 
the aristocracy of America and the leading power 
in every civilized country. It represents the guid¬ 
ing and directing force in industry and commerce, 
intellectual attainments, science, art, and the virile 
forces of progress. The Bourgeoisie came into 
power by evolution, although the process, violent 
in some countries and positively peaceful in others, 
may be designated as revolution; it is well to note 
that where the most violence was evident, the more 
terrible was the action and reaction of adjustment. 

In olden times the lower and middle classes 
bowed before the authority of the Church and the 
despotism of worldly rulers. Today men see that 
divinely constituted authority to keep men resigned 
to a fate of serfdom was religious blasphemy, and 
they decline to accept the “Divine Right” of rulers. 
Kautsky writes: “Not only the government of 
France, but the dynasties of Italy, Spain, Bul¬ 
garia, England and Holland, are of revolutionary 
origin. The Kings of Bavaria and Wurttemberg, 
the Grand Duke of Baden and Hesse, owe, not 
simply their titles, but a large share of their prov¬ 
inces, to the protection of the revolutionary par¬ 
venu — Napoleon; the Hohenzollerns attained 
their present position over the ruins of thrones, and 
even the Hapsburgers bowed before the Hun¬ 
garian revolution. Andrassy, who was hung in 
effigy for high treason, in 1852, was an Imperial 


8 


SOCIALISM 


Minister in 1867, without proving untrue to the 
ideas of the National Hungarian Revolution of 
1848.” 

Revolutionists who teach prompt and violent 
action often oppose the scientific doctrine of social 
evolution by referring to the experiments of De 
Bries, who maintained that occasionally in the 
development of plants, species are apt to suddenly 
“explode” and give life to countless new forms, 
some of which are virile and multiply, while others, 
in harmony with the law of the Survival of the 
Fittest and the elimination of the Unfit, disappear. 
There is much we do not know about plant culture; 
the agencies of nature are multitudinous and plant 
“explosions” may occur under peculiar influencing 
conditions and under the domination of agencies 
of which we are ignorant and cannot, therefore, 
control. Has any scientist discovered that the hu¬ 
man or any other type of animal life may “ex¬ 
plode” and produce a variegated conglomeration 
of new animals, thus refuting the doctrines of 
steady evolution and suggesting a law of revolu¬ 
tion? Some new power may seem to descend on 
man out of an apparently clear sky, but every 
force expressed in life is the result of gradual evo¬ 
lution. The act of birth is revolution, but the 
development of the fetus to the period of birth, and 
throughout the lifetime beyond birth, is evolution. 

The day for preaching class distinction and con¬ 
trasting the exploiter with the exploited, has 
passed. Life does not consist of a struggle between 
the hunted and oppressed, on the one hand, and 
hunting, crushing, brutal forces on the other. 


SOCIALISM 


9 


Life’s struggles are competitive, for such condi¬ 
tions bring out the best in man; but they also elim¬ 
inate class barriers and make the world of possible 
achievement open and free to all. Evolution de¬ 
mands the absolute liberation of the individual and 
the regulation of social chaos; these are being 
rapidly realized, not by revolution or anarchism, 
but by that Universal Spirit of Progress which is 
moving all things steadily but positively toward its 
goal. Evolution, void of violence, organized or 
legalized theft, or class upheaval, will perfect man¬ 
kind, glorify true individuality, intensify the power 
of progress, and produce a society, where peace 
and harmony are fundamental and where each 
man will be placed according to his capacity and 
rewarded according to his work. 


CHAPTER II 


Evolutionary Human Progress 

T HE progress of mankind has not been due 
to the fanatically extreme movements of an 
unbalanced part of the Body Social, no mat¬ 
ter what beneficial ideals they may have inscribed 
upon their banners; nor has progress ever been 
definitely realized by anarchical revolts and defi¬ 
ance of law and order. All such movements are 
centrifugal, tending to fly out from the centre of 
things and thus act in violation of natural law. 

Universal laws act upon the soul of man with 
forces that are antagonistic and opposed to the 
bigoted, sensational and intolerant characteristics 
of pseudo-reformers, void of the virtue of poise 
and true humanity. The Great First Cause of all 
things is the centre of all things and tends to draw 
the spirit in man ever toward Himself; thus the 
soul journey in life is from the extended circum¬ 
ference and materialistic activity, by centripetal 
motion through the humanities of life, nearer and 
nearer the source of all life and knowledge. Great 
ideals may be prosecuted with tyranny and cruelty; 
some of the greatest horrors of history have been 
perpetrated by fanatics, urged forward by a false 
and intense conception of duty, with unswerving 
allegiance to an ideal that their finite minds were 
not capable of understanding. The greatest vices 
10 


SOCIALISM 


11 


of all times have sprung from human egoism, 
coupled with ignorance and false mental images 
of truth. 

Nature marches onward, silently, inexorably, to 
fulfill its destiny. All things happen according to 
their nature; and all nature and the universe, far 
beyond our finite understanding, function in har¬ 
mony with the Creative Will. Shaftesbury truly 
said: “In the main all things are kindly and well 
disposed.” An undistorted vision of life, as a whole, 
vitalizes the embers of a smouldering love into an 
energetic soul fire of active, progressive optimism. 
Our human knowledge, our classifying powers and 
mental grouping of concepts, may be variable. Our 
views, intensity, clearness and angle of vision may 
change, but not the eternal verities. 

Complete, unadulterated truths are difficult to 
see. They are blinding in their brilliancy. Man is 
generally happier for the moment when dabbling 
with half-truths, because they seem easier to com¬ 
prehend, appear more humanly comfortable, and 
are still easier for man to attempt to explain; but 
half-truths lead to discontent, pessimism, and ulti¬ 
mately centrifugal action. The whole truths, on 
the other hand, must inevitably cleanse and regen¬ 
erate the soul of man, show the true purpose and 
the breadth and bigness of life, the power and jus¬ 
tice of the Creator, and illuminate life with the 
conviction that “all things work together for good.” 
“Evolution” is the Cosmic answer to the fanatic, 
who would immediately “reform” a heterogeneous 
society and eliminate what he considers error, even 
if this error seem virtue from another’s viewpoint. 


12 


SOCIALISM 


No true reform can ever spring from without; 
it can never be a political or social movement; it 
must originate in the inner soul of man and work 
out. Reformers of mankind would do well to im¬ 
bibe the wisdom of St. Bernard, who wrote: “Noth¬ 
ing can work me damage except myself, the harm 
that I sustain I carry about with me and never am 
a real sufferer but by my own fault.” 

The world’s geniuses have never been reformers; 
they have never felt, Atlas-like, the burden of the 
world; they have never inspired or fostered revo¬ 
lutions, but have always been actuated by the spirit 
of truth and progress, working unconsciously by 
the law of evolution through the channels of their 
souls. Corrective reactions, possibly with some 
violence, may follow the work of genius, but this 
is generally due to human impulse, void of all true 
spirit and knowledge of life. Through the annals 
of history, man seems, at times, to have blindly 
striven to produce sudden, intense and spectacular 
changes, rather than the nicer adjustment and less 
harmful modification of existent conditions. These 
impetuous measures are, as a rule, ultimately 
responsible for much human suffering and distress. 

Evolution does not function as a steady flux of 
progress, void of accentuated periods. It is a well 
regulated and never ceasing forward movement; 
and when analytically and microscopically exam¬ 
ined, we find it to be a series of alternations com¬ 
posed of minute, pendulous oscillations from action 
to reaction. Every period of life is an attempt to 
establish equilibrium between stability and varia¬ 
bility. To maintain that which is solid and of true 


SOCIALISM 


13 


worth; to eliminate that which we know to be false; 
to strain forward into the haze ahead, searching 
for greater truths, ever moving forward and up¬ 
ward as we correctly differentiate between truth 
and error and grasp another rung in the ascending 
ladder of eternal progress. 

The general trend of motion on stepping-stones 
of progress is the same and the actions to acquire 
new truths are harmonious, no matter how differ¬ 
ent the courses may seem. The dissimilitude of 
evolutionary phenomena blends, at a little distance, 
into one glorious blaze advancing to ideal com¬ 
pleteness. As Emerson says, “The voyage of the 
best ships is a zig zag line of a hundred tacks. 
See the line from a sufficient distance and it 
straightens itself to the average tendency.” True 
revolutions are but pronounced steps or well de¬ 
fined grooves in the unfolding to man of universal 
liberty, unfettered human reason and recognition 
of eternal verities through the operation of the 
ever-advancing law of evolution. The Creator 
speaks and works through man, and His instru¬ 
ments of service are men of reason, of tolerance and 
imagination. He never insults human intelligence 
by revealing new phases of truth through the me¬ 
dium of human perverseness and fanaticism; such 
mental degeneracy precludes their harmony with 
the Cosmic will. “To a crazy ship all winds are 
contrary.” When the mentality is unbalanced 
and does not function true, the judgments formed 
are erroneous and the resulting prejudices are 
strong and apt to be numerous. It is much easier 
for the average man to be critical than to be cor- 


14 


SOCIALISM 


rect, and it is always easier to tear down than to 
build up. Samuel Johnson said: “I have found 
you an argument, but I am not obliged to find you 
an understanding/’ 

True revolutions are not made; they come, agi¬ 
tated and inspired by the calm and generally un¬ 
ruffled and apparently placid surface of progress. 
The path against tremendous head resistance may 
be like the tacks of the sailing vessel against head 
winds, but the direction is always forward; true 
revolutions are never retrogressive. Every step 
taken in the advancement of civilization originated 
as a ray of eternal light and a flash of divinely 
inspired thought, making its imprint on the plastic 
and receptive mind of man. Every pronounced 
step in the advance of civilization was once an indi¬ 
vidual’s opinion, based and built upon a flash of 
truth from the Eternal, although often attributed 
by an intolerant society to the work of the devil. 

Looking backward over the blood-stained pages 
of history, we have to admit that, in spite of the 
hideous mistakes of man, the course of evolution 
has been progressive and sure. The truth and 
beauty of the universe are steadily becoming the 
possessions of free and enlightened man. The 
genius is no longer hurled from society as an 
atheist and heretic, but is hailed as an especially 
gifted messenger to reveal the forces of the uni¬ 
verse to groping man. In this age of liberty and 
a growing knowledge of truth, man is giving and 
receiving recognition of ability in every field of 
endeavor. Moreover, the trend of evolution is 


SOCIALISM 


15 


conspicuously evident when we see man bending 
his efforts toward universal freedom, the brother¬ 
hood of man and the perpetual peace of the 
world. 


CHAPTER III 


The French Revolution and Social Evolution 

F RANCE has seen many Revolutions, both 
before and after the Revolution of 1789- 
1794, yet we speak of this period of horribly 
dramatic and rapidly changing activities as The 
French Revolution. Other countries have suffered 
or benefited by momentous Revolutions, yet the 
French Revolution was of such wide-spread impor¬ 
tance and gigantic proportions that it is spoken of 
as “The Revolution.” This tremendous upheaval 
had its inception in a more or less aimless revolt 
and kept gaining impetus and periodical concen¬ 
tration of purpose until it became a mighty unman¬ 
ageable thing. With hands steeped in blood, it 
devastated with anarchical frenzy, correcting error 
with error, preaching love and brotherhood while 
practicing hatred, jealousy and avarice. 

The French Revolution prepared the way for 
Napoleon, the world’s greatest autocratic upstart. 
Although it preached democracy and the equality 
of man, yet the French conception of such splen¬ 
did doctrines was indicated by their attempt to 
govern and enslave the world, though unable to 
govern and control themselves. 

And yet this great cataclysm of rebellion, which 
rent Europe and has left its indelible mark upon 
the world, would have been prevented and the same 
results most probably achieved by less harmful 
16 


SOCIALISM 


17 


means, if only Marie Antoinette had been French 
in either blood or sympathy, or if Louis XVI had 
been, by nature’s endowment, fitted to rule. The 
King had the characteristics of a country squire, 
of very narrow interests; but in addition he was 
stupid, slow in thought and movement, avoided the 
making of decisions, and took pleasure in sleeping 
on his throne, or in his Chapel. If Louis had been 
more of a man and less of a bigoted churchman, 
the Revolution could not have happened. The 
overthrow of royalty in France was the sickening 
disgust of a people wearied in doing homage to 
very ordinary, mediocre rulers, who by nature were 
never fitted to occupy thrones, notwithstanding 
their regal pedigree. As Louis was better fitted 
for non-arduous agricultural interests, Marie An¬ 
toinette with her energy and extremely narrow 
vision, could have acceptably performed the role 
of a farmer’s housewife. There was no thought in 
the early days of the Revolution of removing the 
King; the people revered the imaginary, traditional 
sanctity of the throne; but as they came in closer 
contact with the weak humanity of Kingship and 
the active, disloyal mind of the Queen, all their 
respect as well as reverence vanished. Intimate 
contact of a people with Royalty and Aristocracy 
generally proves that the glories and halos which 
seem so wonderful, glittering and dominant from 
afar, quickly change to tinsel and vaporous noth¬ 
ingness at close hand. No royal couple could have 
been selected from the pages of mediaeval history 
who possessed less real substance of autocratic 
leadership, or more superficial attributes of regality 


18 


SOCIALISM 


than the simple, crude Louis and the erratic Marie, 
whose conception of her superiority to others was 
accompanied by vulgar crudities, errors of vision 
and intuition and capabilities that limited her use¬ 
fulness to her own family circle. 

In the Eighteenth Century, France was socially 
depraved; the country reeked with the oppression 
of the poor, the vices of the upper classes, serious 
economic conditions, the vacillations of Royalty, 
and the worldliness and indifference of the Church. 
The people clamored for the revival of representa¬ 
tion which had fallen into disuse for two centuries. 
Their desires were not concrete; they craved for 
an improvement in the conditions of the masses; 
they desired some definite plan of reform and rep¬ 
resentation in government. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, hailed as the chief 
prophet of the Revolution, was born in Geneva in 
1712, of French parents; his father was dissipated, 
violent-tempered and mentally deficient. Rousseau 
was always a nervous, excitable individual and it 
has been said that he had “a diseased sort of char¬ 
acter.” His contemporaries unite in describing him 
as a flighty sentimentalist in morals and politics 
and of a temperament artificial, fanatical, dishon¬ 
est and ever insincere. Rousseau proved incompe¬ 
tent in every line of work in which he engaged; 
stole from an employer and benefactor and to es¬ 
cape the consequences, accused a fellow-servant of 
the crime. His superficial pretensions proved early 
that his mind was unbalanced; part of his life he 
spent in voluntary vagabondage; his children he 
placed in a Foundling Hospital. He was indo- 


SOCIALISM 


19 


lent, persistently refused responsibility, and was 
obnoxious to the philosophers as well as to the 
orthodox coterie of his day; his one talent being 
style of written expression. He was, by nature, 
emotionally impulsive, in later life became admit¬ 
tedly insane, and it has been claimed that he com¬ 
mitted suicide. 

Rousseau wrote on many topics, most of which 
were trash. Belloc, describing his literary produc¬ 
tions, says: “He wrote upon education, and the 
glory of his style carried conviction, both where he 
was right and where the short experience of a hun¬ 
dred years has proved him to have been wholly 
wrong. He wrote upon love, and half the lessons 
to be drawn from his writings will be condemned. 
He wrote upon human inequality, and though the 
sentences were beautiful and the sentiments just, 
the analysis was very insufficient and the historical 
conception bad. He wrote upon a project for per¬ 
petual peace which was rubbish.” Yet one of the 
writings of this man,—the “Contrat Social,” which 
was possibly, with one exception, his only lucid 
work, became the formula of the Revolutionary 
creed and the Bible of the Revolution and Reign of 
Anarchy. It has been said of the “Contrat Social,” 
a small unobtrusive volume, that its “style and log¬ 
ical connection may be compared to some exact and 
strong piece of engineering.” No one man can mold 
a people or create a creed; but the erratic, half- 
maddened Rousseau did more than any other half 
dozen men in France to inspire the Revolution, 
when he wrote and vocalized a timely creed for an 
oppressed people. His thoughts dominated the 


20 


SOCIALISM 


turbulent years of the Revolution and the leaders 
of that bloody period of history regarded the mem¬ 
ory of this hysterical, unbalanced man with adora¬ 
tion and undisguised idolatry. 

Rousseau’s work on Conscious Association, or 
Social Contract, is not free from flaws, but it is 
a book of merit and contains much unanswerable 
logic; its noblest expressions can be found in our 
own Declaration of Independence. The Revolu¬ 
tion of the New England States and the liberation 
of the United States from the humiliating and 
restraining hand of badly governed Britain, was 
a revolt for freedom, a definite purpose toward 
democracy, permeated with true principle and the 
spirit of life. The Revolution of France, affecting 
its twenty-five millions of people, was more needed 
for the advancement of civilization than our own 
rebellion against oppression; but France had an 
indefinite purpose, a vacillating ideal; the spirit 
was deadened and the materialistic, brutal passions 
of man, void of the true religion of the universe, 
gained in intensity and magnitude, as a snowball 
rolling down hill. The soul of France was en¬ 
chained and no literary efforts of man or creeds 
of mortal mind were sufficient to keep the animal 
in man from finding its expression in human 
passion. 

Revolution allied with anarchy, removed the 
French King, Louis XVI, by murder. They 
claimed that they needed no King; later they 
crowned the greatest tyrant of modern history, 
Napoleon, as Emperor; and still later gave the 
crown to Louis XVIII, of the same ruling house 


SOCIALISM 


21 


that they had previously so ruthlessly condemned. 

Revolution, aided and abetted by anarchy, di¬ 
vorced the Roman Church from the State. All 
ties were severed, property confiscated, and priests 
were hunted like criminals; yet within a few years 
Roman Catholicism was once more officially de¬ 
clared the dominant religion of France. 

Revolution, accompanied by hysterical and pas¬ 
sionate anarchy, preached liberty, fraternity and 
equality; but no life was secure in the Kingdom. 
Avarice, the lust of despotism, and tyranny of con¬ 
quest, entered the souls of the people and Europe 
became a field of blood. Liberty for one became 
serfdom for another; fraternity merged into hys¬ 
terical militarism; tolerance and equality degener¬ 
ated into an autocracy of absolutism which United 
Europe at last rose up in indignant wrath to crush. 
And thus perish all revolutions which are yoked 
with soulless anarchy against the peoples, creations 
and laws of humanity. 

It is well to beware of the popular catch phrases 
of the glib revolutionary vocabulary. Burke called 
the French citizen-patriots’ slogan “rights of man” 
merely an “institution and digest of anarchy.” 
Shakespeare in Henry IV says: 

“O God! that one might read the book of fate 
And see the revolutions of the times 
Make mountains level, and the continent 
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself 
Into the sea!” 

Materialistic human nature frequently expresses 
a yearning for change, for variety, for novelty. 


22 


SOCIALISM 


This feeling is not a desire for the acquirement of 
truths beyond, neither is it the praiseworthy ambi¬ 
tion for achievement, for constructive purpose, for 
advancement in service; but it is the restless, un¬ 
satisfied craving for diversity, the anarchical spirit 
that would thoughtlessly and with utter disregard 
of consequences, dissolve the foundations of our 
structure of life into the sea, in order to split open 
by catastrophe, what seems to the mentally defi¬ 
cient or slothful pessimist, to be a mere hum-drum, 
useless existence, decreed by an indifferent and 
non-understandable fate. 

Ignorance is the first essential to anarchy, and 
this is followed by repudiation of God and the 
unchanging laws of creation and development. 
Anarchy is the devil’s sop to failure and moral 
cowardice. It typifies brawn rather than brain; 
animal impulse rather than spiritual reflection; 
action without reason; destruction and not con¬ 
struction; vindictive, despicable sabotage, void of 
justice, and often abrupt change without cause. 

Only by the encouragement of the individual 
and the establishment of the Social Order, founded 
on bonds of moral faith and with the soul’s contact 
with the Divine, can the world continue its upward 
march from the savagery of the past. Freedom 
of thought and unrestrained expression of such 
thought is the greatest boon that man has wrested 
from all time. But absolute freedom has its dis¬ 
advantages, in that it tends to intensify error by 
unfettered expression and circulation. Time, with¬ 
out any other aid, will ultimately see to the vic¬ 
torious predominance of truth, the supplanting or 


SOCIALISM 


23 


uprooting of error, and the restoration of equilib¬ 
rium. In the meanwhile, false doctrine subtly 
charged with magnetism for human failure, sloth 
and discontent, have free circulation; these ideas 
make converts of those who act with the spinal 
cord, void of true reasoning faculties. With a 
cramped and dwarfed soul-vision, the victims of 
false doctrines are unable to look beyond their own 
environment of voluntary restriction. 

Even an ascetic, an ethically minded teacher or 
an apparently altruistic reformer, may do more 
harm than good in the world unless he plants his 
feet on the solid earth of men—real men of flesh 
and blood; he must have eyes of wide focus and 
depth of vision which perceives not one wrong, but 
life with all its goodness as well as evil, and the 
relation of each phase of flittering life to other 
phases of what is but an interconnected, progres¬ 
sive and almost indivisible whole. Every theorist 
not in the midst of the fray of life, may feel that he 
can reform the world. If circumstances bring him 
into the battles of life, his viewpoint, provided he 
be honest and non-fanatical, will in all probability 
change; his puny and limited ideas quickly fade 
and he sees both the little which he can do and the 
much which he cannot and should not attempt to 
do. “Great should be the joy of the world over 
every reformer that comes to himself.” The world 
has not the desire to, and could not if it would, 
return to any former state. Its errors are of the 
past; man grows and develops toward truth. He 
is never re-formed or re-modelled, but by evolution 
expands in knowledge, in perception, and in that 


24 


SOCIALISM 


recognition of the Universal Spirit which throws 
light on his path and gives vision to his soul. 

And so life with all its so-called revolutions and 
reformations, is but a concatenation in the links 
of evolution. The links are not of uniform size 
and the chain of progress is not “paid out” at a 
uniform speed, but rather at an accelerating speed 
with periods of pronounced alternation of inten¬ 
sity and apparent inaction. Evolution is progress 
toward an ideal. Social evolution, whether influ¬ 
enced by social reform or social revolution of a 
positive or negative nature, will be accelerated or 
retarded according to the spirit and true humanity 
of each movement; but evolution is certain, it can¬ 
not be checked by man’s errors, even though it may 
be slackened. Evolution is a positive flux toward 
a positive, unchanging goal. Man assists or ham¬ 
pers true progress, but he cannot change the law of 
motion or reverse the direction of flow. 


CHAPTER IV 


Anarchism and Nihilism 

T HE word Anarch means without head or 
chief, and anarchy, therefore, implies an 
absence of government or a state of society 
where there is no law or supreme power. Anarch¬ 
ism has many diversified shades of meaning, but 
in its essence it is anti-authoritarianism. Proudhon 
preached Individualistic Anarchism; Bakunin de¬ 
scribed himself as a collectivist anarchist; Kropot¬ 
kin advocates communist anarchism, and Tolstoy 
typifies what has been termed Christian anarchism. 

The term Anarchism first originated with Pierre 
Joseph Proudhon, who was born in France, of 
humble parents, in 1809. As a boy he was self- 
educated, but he succeeded in working his way 
through college and we are told that his family was 
so poor that he would return home from school, 
laden with prizes, to find a bare table and empty 
cupboard. Proudhon’s life was marked by pro¬ 
nounced simplicity and strict religious ideals. He 
was upright and honest, possessing charming at¬ 
tributes of friendship and domesticity; he was bit¬ 
terly opposed to the Socialism of France because 
of its immorality and Utopianism. Born under 
different conditions and with the benefit of a less 
severe, unlovely environment of injustice and suf¬ 
fering, Proudhon would have been a great power 
in the world; as it was he became deeply embit- 


25 


26 


SOCIALISM 


tered against all forms of government, and al¬ 
though we are told that he was positively free from 
personal hate, he, nevertheless, seemed to revel in 
wild paradox and vehement invective against the 
dominant ideas and institutions. Proudhon said 
that the “Government of man by man in every 
form is oppression. The highest perfection of soci¬ 
ety is found in the union of order and anarchy.” 
He permeated the word anarchy with variable 
shades of meaning, declaring at one time that it 
was not used in a revolutionary sense, but to force¬ 
fully express the highest perfection of social or¬ 
ganization ; again he said that anarchy was the goal 
of the free development of society, and through 
the ethical progress of men, government should 
become unnecessary. “Each man should be a law 
to himself.” 

Proudhon’s famous paradox, “Property is 
Theft,” is but a keen and forceful expression of 
the Marx Theory of Capital. Proudhon taught 
that “as slavery is assassination, insomuch as it 
destroys all that is valuable and desirable in hu¬ 
man personality, so property is theft, insomuch as 
it appropriates the value produced by the labor of 
others without rendering an equivalent.” Prou¬ 
dhon advocated equal pay for all service. He 
preached justice, liberty and absolute equality, and 
even believed that men would all in time be leveled 
to the plane of uniform talents and similarity of 
inheritance and desires. Proudhon would give the 
same pay to an ignorant garbage collector that he 
would to the greatest executive, artist or scientist 
of the day; thus he proved his narrowness of vision 


SOCIALISM 


27 


and his ignorance of the dominant forces of life 
and evolution. Man will ever be unequal, for 
progress demands it; property will become com¬ 
pensation for services rendered; and reward for 
work acceptably performed will always be com¬ 
mensurate with its relative importance and diffi¬ 
culty of achievement. Proudhon had a splendid 
mind, warped in reasoning power and judgment 
by class oppression. Some of his theories were 
true, but many were wild and false; nevertheless, 
he was not a violent revolutionary anarchist, but 
rather a peaceful protest against the errors of 
his day. 

Marx disliked Proudhon, and although he gained 
much knowledge from him, he afterwards persist¬ 
ently attacked him on matters in which they were 
both in error. Marx’s treatment of Proudhon is 
a stain that the intolerant, vindictive and egotistical 
founder of so-called scientific socialism must ever 
bear. 

Engels, the collaborator of Marx, writes of a 
future ideal condition of society not materially 
different from that contemplated by the Anarchical 
School. Engels said: “The appropriation of the 
means of production in the name of society is also 
its last independent act as state. In place of the 
government over persons there will be an adminis¬ 
tration of things and the control of productive pro¬ 
cesses. The State is not abolished; it dies away.” 
Therefore, both anarchists and socialists, although 
the latter maintain that the two schools are polar 
opposites, look forward to a time when the admin- 


28 


SOCIALISM 


istration of social affairs will be conducted without 
the exercise of any degree of compulsion. 

Although anarchism originated with Proudhon, 
it owes its fuller development chiefly to the free 
thinking and protesting Russians, of whom 
Michael Bakunin, born in 1814 of Russian nobility, 
was the great leader. Bakunin was a forceful, 
dominating thinker, of dogged and obstinate en¬ 
ergy. Somewhat fanatical, he fought his battle of 
life ever true to his ideal as he saw it, although his 
vision became more and more unreal as he grew 
older. He looked with scorn on fortune, worldly 
rank and glory; suffered in prison and in exile, 
but was ever aggressive in giving expression to his 
doctrine. He urged the complete abolition of the 
State, which he claimed belonged to a lower state 
of civilization representing the negation of liberty, 
and spoiling everything it undertook to do. In a 
word he said: “We object to all legislation, all 
authority, and all influence, privileged, patented, 
official and legal, even when it has proceeded from 
universal suffrage; convinced that it must always 
turn to the profit of a dominating and exploiting 
minority against the interests of the majority en¬ 
slaved.” 

In 1869, Bakunin with his anarchists joined 
forces with the International, but Marx and he 
were each too domineering, autocratic, and uncom¬ 
promising to get along in harmony; so Bakunin 
and his followers were expelled by the stronger 
Marx party at the Hague Congress in 1872, and 
the General Council of the International was re¬ 
moved to New York. Bakunin then formed an 


SOCIALISM 


29 


alliance which was known as the International 
Social Democratic Alliance, and it declared itself 
atheistic. It suggested the abolition of all relig¬ 
ions; the displacement of faith by science; the tri¬ 
umph of human justice over the false conceptions 
of divine justice; elimination of classes and of mar¬ 
riage; the political, social and economic equality 
of individuals and sexes; abolition of inheritance, 
and it advocated common property and the con¬ 
demnation of patriotism and national jealousy. 

Bakunin’s followers, losing completely what lit¬ 
tle balance they ever possessed, became destructive 
and violent. They named themselves autonomists 
—not rulers of self, but indulgent advocates of 
self-license—and the history of their efforts to 
overthrow all existing institutions with a view to 
reconstructing them to please themselves was a 
drastic expression of Anarchy. The movement 
was particularly bloody in Spain until they were 
wiped out of existence in 1879. 

Bakunin was a revolutionist. He strove to 
establish an erroneous conception of an ideal by 
peace or by force; but he succeeded in increasing 
suffering instead of diminishing it, by urging his 
followers onward to a wretched, impossible task 
which inevitably involved merciless and universal 
destruction. He died in 1876, but his School con¬ 
tinues to teach the pernicious doctrine that a revo¬ 
lutionist is “a consecrated man, who will allow no 
private interest or feelings and no scruples of 
religion, patriotism or morality to turn him aside 
from his mission; the aim of which is by all avail¬ 
able means to overthrow existing society.” Thus 


30 


SOCIALISM 


the word anarch came to refer to one who excites 
revolt, an assassin, a seditious bomb-throwing in¬ 
surgent against established law and order. 

In the meanwhile a revolutionary socialism of 
an academical character had developed in Russia. 
It became known as Nihilism—nothingness—and 
was expressed in its early stages by negativism. 
The country was oppressed by an almost incom¬ 
prehensible encumbrance of prejudices and abuses, 
and Nihilism represents a curious moral awakening 
of certain educated classes following the humilia¬ 
tion of the Crimean War. It was originally a 
movement among the educated classes; its advo¬ 
cates desired to throw aside all religion, family life, 
private property and centralized administration, 
and regulate all life by the light of natural science. 
Nihilists, as described by Turgenief, were “men 
who bowed before no authority of any kind and 
accepted no faith or principle, whatever veneration 
might surround it.” Kirkup says that they weighed 
political institutions and social forms, religion and 
the family life in the balance of negative criticism, 
which was their prevailing characteristic, and they 
found them all wanting. With revolutionary impa¬ 
tience they rejected everything that had come down 
from the past, good and bad alike. They had no 
respect for art, poetry, sentiment or romance, and 
“a new fact added to positive knowledge in the 
dissecting of a frog was more important than the 
poetry of Goethe or a painting by Raphael.” 

We may respect the courage, integrity, stead¬ 
fastness and unselfish purpose of the early Nihi¬ 
lists, the harmless student teachers working in 


SOCIALISM 


31 


secret to teach freedom to the ignorant, half-brute, 
down-trodden peasants, but we cannot have any 
sympathy for their cynicism, crudeness of senti¬ 
ment and indifference to the true spirit of life, 
love and brotherhood. It has been said that from 
the first, the Nihilists felt a broad and real sym¬ 
pathy for the lowest suffering classes. But how 
can this be, when the Nihilists boasted of hardened 
hearts and positive indifference to all human 
feelings? 

The Nihilist Movement of Negation was fol¬ 
lowed by revolutionary, socialistic teachings and 
secret propaganda with the anarchism of Bakunin 
as the source of inspiration. As has been said, 
“Negation may be the physic, but it cannot be the 
diet of the mind.” Among the student body of 
Russia, it became a fad or mania to absorb the 
extreme utilitarianism of the socialistic Nihilists 
and to “go among the people” in humble disguise. 
There was no real organization, although Netch- 
aiev, an energetic agitator, organized a small secret 
association, known as “The Society for the Libera¬ 
tion of the People”; when the founder suspected 
one of the members of treachery, he caused him 
to be assassinated. 

Prior to 1876 the Nihilists were peacefully in¬ 
clined. They worked among the peasants, but 
were treated with suspicion by the class they en¬ 
deavored to elevate. The Russian authorities, be¬ 
tween 1873 and 1876, arrested two thousand Nihi¬ 
lists and by violent methods endeavored to stamp 
out the growing germ of protest against prevalent 
abuse. Then the Nihilists became Anarchists and 


32 


SOCIALISM 


commenced a propaganda of action; two years of 
arrest and punishment were followed by three 
years of terrorist crimes and eight years of stamp¬ 
ing out and successful despotic victory over anarch¬ 
ism. The Nihilists received no mercy, so they 
showed none. Their resolute and merciless strug¬ 
gle for liberty against the crushing vice of the 
Czardom, resulted in assassinations in 1878 to re¬ 
venge crimes of despotism against innocent human¬ 
ity. Strong secret organizations were now formed. 
All kinds of propaganda were illegal in Russia; 
there was no freedom of speech, no right to congre¬ 
gate, no liberty of the press. Laws could be sus¬ 
pended, trial denied and victims of the Plutonic 
autocracy could be exiled, jailed or executed at 
the whim of the dominant powers in the Bureau¬ 
cracy. 

Czar Alexander II was killed in 1881, a martyr 
to Russian traditions, for he himself had liberal 
views and desired conciliatory reforms. His suc¬ 
cessor, Alexander III, had no desire to limit the 
autocratic power or make any concessions of any 
kind to the revolutionists; and Russia continued a 
land where liberty and freedom were unknown; 
police and spies ruled or intimidated the people 
and at times goaded them into violent action. 
During these long years of revolutionary secret 
anarchism, there has been a horrible toll of torture 
and suffering which has decimated the noblest 
and best families of the land. Liberty in Russia is 
still a farce; during the five years ending 1910 there 
were 19,145 convictions for political offences and 
over 5,735 death sentences. 


SOCIALISM 


33 


A new revolutionary movement arising from in¬ 
dustrial conditions, became evident in the gigantic 
strike of 1896, at St. Petersburg. The atrocities 
of January, 1905, with its “Bloody Sunday” added 
fagots to the flame of human passion and class 
hatred. On this day one hundred thousand, un¬ 
armed and peaceable, followed Father Gapon to 
the Winter Palace to claim political rights, and 
were shot down like wild animals. Great strikes 
and uprisings followed, and the battleship Potem¬ 
kin was captured by mutineers. 

The history of the past few generations proves 
the hopelessness of any country’s attempting, in 
these days of rapidly increasing enlightenment, to 
govern its people by an autocracy. Instability ac¬ 
companies despotism; a constitutional monarchy is 
far more stable, but the world must come to true 
democracy with direct representation and absolute 
freedom, before peace will reign throughout all 
lands. 

Prince Kropotkin was born of the highest aristoc¬ 
racy of Russia. He is a man of culture and of 
peace, yet he preaches “an objection to all author¬ 
ity and all government.” In all human relations 
he would “in place of legal and administrative con¬ 
trol, substitute free contract perpetually subject to 
revision and cancelment.” He would place capital 
at the disposal of all, and desires equality of fact 
as corollary or rather as a primordial condition of 
freedom. Anarchists of the Kropotkin School 
maintain that the leading principles of anarchism 
are “rejection of all external authority and all pri¬ 
vate appropriations of land and capital; human 


34 


SOCIALISM 


relations will depend on the free action and assent 
of the individuals concerned,” and it has been said 
that “because of the continual misery and degra¬ 
dation of the proletariat, they proclaim the sacred 
right of insurrection.” 

Tolstoy, the founder of the School of Christian 
Anarchy, did splendid service in Russia as a per¬ 
petual protest against the inhumanities of the gov¬ 
ernment. He possessed great literary ability, had 
no great following and fortunately for himself and 
mankind in general, he was powerful enough by 
birth and friendship to defy the traditions and the 
bloody hounds of Russia. He advocated anarchism, 
but it was the anarchy of non-resistance, and his 
doctrine has been described as a strange compound 
of modernism and medievalism constantly chang¬ 
ing. 

Many crimes of recent years charged to anarchy, 
are not the work of political anarchists, but many 
are. Vaillant, who exploded a bomb in the French 
Chamber of Deputies, 1893, when reproached for 
endangering the lives of innocent women and chil¬ 
dren, cried out “There can be no innocent Bour¬ 
geois.” The assassination of President Carnot, of 
France, 1894, Empress of Austria, 1898, King 
Humbert of Italy, 1900, President McKinley, 
1901, and the Haymarket atrocities at Chicago in 
1886, are all horrible instances of frenzied anarch¬ 
ism. In 1894 our country passed a law to keep 
out foreign anarchists and to deport any found in 
this country. 

All criminals and degenerates are not anarchists, 
neither are all political conspirators who practice 


SOCIALISM 


35 


violence, anarchists; Meunter was a degenerate and 
not an anarchist. Kirkup states that anarchism is 
in part a matter of temperament, and in part of 
environment, and adds: “The type of mind which 
vehemently resents control, which idolizes personal 
independence and considers protest against au¬ 
thority a virtue, readily adopts the notion that any 
method of discrediting and destroying the existing 
government is lawful and expedient and the ex¬ 
amples of outrages in countries where the govern¬ 
ment is the enemy have been occasionally followed, 
chiefly by exasperated exiles in other lands, where 
such actions have scarcely the shadow of excuse.” 

War is but anarchy among nations and will pass 
only when the alliances among nations expand into 
one great federation. A world of powers present¬ 
ing their grievances at an International Court of 
Justice, instead of resorting to the bomb-throwing, 
diabolical manias of anarchism, will hail the dawn 
of that day, when the citizens of all the world will 
be freed from the sufferings and horrors of strife 
and the non-productiveness of organized destroyers. 
Then will the world proclaim, with this Renaissance 
of moral and economic conditions, “Peace on earth 
—good will toward men.” 


CHAPTER V 


Anarchism, the Creed of Human Chaos 

T HERE is a modern school of Ethical Anarch¬ 
ism which condemns violence of every kind, 
whether on the part of the individual or on 
the part of society. It maintains that government 
by force has established and by law protects the 
worst manifest frauds and wrongs. It calls our at¬ 
tention to the Government’s barbaric way of set¬ 
tling international questions by force with the 
accompanying destruction of millions of human be¬ 
ings and suffering far beyond any power of compre¬ 
hension; whereas such disputes are all subject to 
rational adjustment. Anarchy is preached as the 
ultimate freedom, human emancipation—a great 
ideal; but this is not anarchism, but rather idealized 
individuality. Every thinker is more or less of an 
anarchist, using the ethical interpretation of the 
word; and the world is slowly moving to an ideal 
state, where government will be within men instead 
of over men. The way to perfection is through edu¬ 
cation, encouragement and the extension of law 
and positively not through the immediate abolition 
of it. Co-operation in material production and an¬ 
archism in the intellectual forces of life, may form 
a social creed of the future, but a man must have 
social union with his fellows and work in concert 
with them, maintaining at the same time his indi¬ 
viduality and mental freedom, if he is to develop 

36 


SOCIALISM 


37 


into a creative human unit and fit into the machine 
of progress, operated by the Eternal Cosmic Spirit 
of life. 

Anarchism, which defies all authority, denies the 
existence of the authority of universal creation ex¬ 
pressed by the immutable laws of life. Even ethical, 
idealistic anarchism is, therefore, but sublime ma¬ 
terialistic and dogmatic egoism, imperial individual¬ 
istic selfishness which it is hoped will be dominated 
by an altruistic code of ethics; but where will such a 
code come from and what power is going to cause 
man, with animal passion and inherent selfishness, 
to willingly adopt such rules, when he sees that no 
immediate benefit will accrue to himself? Anarch¬ 
ism is individualism dethroned; it is individualism 
void of the co-operative, ultra-rationalistic spirit of 
mutuality in social intercourse; it is individualism 
robbed of the soul—a mere materialistic shell. 

Anarchism is immoral in its incompleteness. All 
government is not evil; the law of the universe and 
the controlling, harmonious forces of life govern 
and they are not evil. Great enterprises and the 
world-changing industries of life, down to the 
simpler codes of economic work, cannot be per¬ 
formed without organization and anarchy will not 
cohabit with any form of social mutuality. It poses 
as a law unto itself—the deification of self-interest. 
It is opposed to socialism and both are opposed to 
true perfecting and creative individualism. We 
hear at times the term “philosophic anarchism,” 
which is supposed to describe ethical anarchism. It 
may be anarchy represented by forbearance, calm¬ 
ness of temper and fortitude; but it is not practical 



38 


SOCIALISM 


wisdom, it is not philosophy. It is a negative theory 
of life and could more justly, because of its ma¬ 
terialism, be termed Philistinism. Anarchism as 
presented and expressed by different schools and 
creeds, has today as many shades of color as the 
rainbow, but in our further discussion of it, we will 
paint anarchism in its true color of red, and red it 
will be whether clothed in the blue garb of culture 
or the yellow garb of militant feminism. Anarch¬ 
ism at the core is unrestrained and uncontrolled 
revolution; a riotous centrifugal divergence from 
law and order. 

Anarchy cannot be successfully organized, for 
the principle of the anarchist is opposed to any au¬ 
thority other than his own perverted mind. There 
can be no such thing as a reasoning, reflective or 
judicial anarchist. He is egoistic and purely de¬ 
structive. His creed and belligerent cry is always 
the same—“Whatever is, is not.” Any law that 
he dislikes, or that interferes with the unrestrained 
expression of his unlicensed passion, should be re¬ 
pealed. Harmony and love should be turned into 
discord, hate and envy; peace into bitter strife; 
truth into falseness; life into death. 

No reform can ever come to mankind through 
the medium of anarchy; the remedies advocated are 
worse than the disease. In these days which herald 
the dawn of world-wide freedom, it is but natural 
that liberty should intoxicate and cause unanchored 
and untutored minds—possibly the progeny of an 
oppressed ancestry—to swing with momentum be¬ 
yond the poise of mental equilibrium to a reaction 
of extreme intensity and unrestraint—defiant, de- 


SOCIALISM 


39 


structive and aggressive. At such times people 
with unbalanced minds have the hallucination that 
they are instruments in the hands of eternal prog¬ 
ress; they fanatically shout with exultation as they 
destroy, and they loudly and persistently affirm 
that they overthrow and devastate solely to clear 
the ground for a wonderful new creation which is 
never built and never will arise from the ashes of 
any social structure. For every wrong there is a 
remedy, but the Creator has never yet ordained that 
a violation of immutable laws shall be the remedy 
of any previously existing error. The Cosmic plan 
of progress invariably demands the abolition of 
the wrong by the forceful crowding out of evil with 
good. 

Many writers are glorifying anarchism. It is 
being glowingly pictured as the only principle of 
life which will bring true freedom, individualism 
and lasting benefit to man; whereas, in truth, 
anarchism is the most positive enemy of both the 
individual and collective society which the present 
century has to reject, if true progress is to con¬ 
tinue. Anarchy is a diversion, not a need; it is a 
picture falsely conceived and is not true substance; 
it is a mirage enticing heart-sick wanderers to a 
Utopia which does not exist; it is moral and 
spiritual disease originally clothed in garments of 
bloody violence, but of late in apparel that, with 
dulled human vision, seems to be the garb of con¬ 
servatism. 

It is surprising to note that the modern leaders 
who advocate anarchy as a nostrum for all human 
ills, claim that they believe that harmony among all 


40 


SOCIALISM 


the multifarious classes and diversified interests of 
society can be obtained by free, voluntary agree¬ 
ments. They repudiate submission to law or obedi¬ 
ence to any authority. They, therefore, cannot be¬ 
lieve that there is any Cosmic law controlling and 
regulating the universe and they must feel that 
natural law is but chance. Anarchists speak glibly 
of “free agreements concluded between the various 
groups, territorial and professional, which must be 
freely constituted for the sake of production and 
consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the in¬ 
finite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized 
being . 55 They urge a condition where society would 
represent nothing immutable, no fixed points, no 
responsibility, and they enthusiastically affirm that 
“harmony would result from an ever-changing ad¬ 
justment and readjustment of equilibrium between 
the multitude of forces and influences . 55 Such in¬ 
fantine doctrines and drivellings of unbalanced and 
undeveloped minds are, in analysis, their own de¬ 
nunciation. But anarchism, if not plausible, is at 
least persistent and we hear that only by anarchy 
and the renouncement of all state and society al¬ 
legiance and the rejection of eternal religion, will 
man “be enabled to obtain the full development of 
all his faculties, intellectual, artistic and moral. 
He would thus be guided in his actions by his own 
understanding, which necessarily would bear the 
impression of a free action and reaction between his 
own self and the ethical conception of his surround¬ 
ings. He would thus be able to reach full indi¬ 
vidualization . 55 

If anarchism had been the creed of man in pre- 


SOCIALISM 


41 


historic ages, there would have been no civilization 
and very probably no surviving human race. 
Anarchism is void of the spirit of progress. It 
maintains that any form of government will always 
be unsatisfactory because of the depravity of man¬ 
kind, and then it affirms that “gentlemen’s agree¬ 
ments” between individuals and factions of the 
same depraved humanity, will stand with that har¬ 
mony which even they admit to be essential for suc¬ 
cess and prosperity. 

Anarchism is the creed of human chaos; it leads 
to inane confusion; it fosters the spirit of revolt; it 
is a deadly poison for the soul of man and not a 
panacea to eliminate all human ills. It is the 
doctrine of unbridled and uncontrolled autocracy 
with complete absolutism exemplified by each in¬ 
dividual member of society. In its essence it de¬ 
nounces that mutual dependence and confidence 
which is the basis of social life, and that considera¬ 
tion, helpfulness and unselfishness which are the 
reflection of the divine mind in man. 

In the last analysis we will find that love is the 
remedy for all existing evils and the only effective 
solvent for all social errors and misunderstandings. 
There can be no cohabitation of anarchism with re¬ 
ligion, for one is the antithesis of the other. With¬ 
out religion there can be no abiding code of morals. 
Pope forcefully describes the destructive depravity 
of anarchy in “The Dunciad.” 

“Religion blushing, veils her sacred fires, 

And unawares morality expires, 

Nor public flame nor private dares to shine; 

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine; 


42 


SOCIALISM 


Lo! thy dread empire chaos is restor’d, 

Light dies before thy uncreating word; 

Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, 
And universal darkness buries all.” 

Many a crank reformer today, with his fanatical 
creed “All things are wrong,” is rapidly drifting to 
the realm of destructive anarchy. The self-elected, 
unbalanced reformer, one of the trials and evils of 
our times, with his unreasoning zeal, his unre¬ 
strained frenzy and wild, extravagant notions, is 
merely a victim of a perverted conscience. This 
form of moral insanity is in the ultimate, fully as 
pronounced and offensive as total depravity. A 
mind that has lost its bearings, that has deliberately 
flown centrifugally into space, defying the restrain¬ 
ing and controlling power of all law, cannot reform 
or even function in evolution; it must fly uncon¬ 
trolled through space with meteoric wildness and 
its inevitable end is disintegration and destruction. 

Wisdom in humanity is evidenced by recognition 
and voluntary compliance with universal laws; not 
in defiance or violation of them. Voltaire said: “To 
be a sage is to avoid the senseless and the depraved.” 
The world teems today, with pseudo-reformers 
masquerading in the garb of wisdom, who by per¬ 
sistent expressions of their senselessness, are brand¬ 
ing themselves with their own created depravity. A 
world of workers with minds single to the further¬ 
ance of eternal laws, cry out to be saved from the 
talkative, fault-finding, muck-raking reformers of 
the century, whose very ignorance, lack of human 
confidence and destructive remedies have a pro¬ 
found savor of anarchy. 


SOCIALISM 


43 


There is a class of egoistic, social reformers, 
whose ranks are recruited from the “unplaced” but 
mentally active world’s workers,—the “Brainy Un¬ 
rest” of society, the badly focused and incomplete 
students of life. Emerson well describes them: 
“Their feet are cold; their heads are hot; the night 
is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption—if 
you come near them and see what conceits they en¬ 
tertain—they are abstractionists and spend their 
days and nights in dreaming some dream; in ex¬ 
pecting the homage of society to some precious 
scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion 
in its presentment; of justice in its application, and 
of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and 
vitalize it.” This class, forever attempting and 
preaching reform, is a great trial to the practical 
men and women who, free of ostentation, are con¬ 
scientiously performing their ordained work in 
the world; with head, heart and hands, they are 
striving through their legitimate work to bring hu¬ 
manity nearer its Creator and Sustainer. 

The pages of history are filled with lessons for 
humanity, but mankind ignores the experiences of 
ancestry. The ancient Greeks urged that “History 
is but philosophy, teaching by examples,” or, as 
Carlyle said, “by experience.” History should be 
the antidote to anarchism and to that class of 
“spinal cord” fanatical reformers, whose effect 
upon the minds of men is fatal, for they leave in 
their wake hysterical passion, indescribable human 
suffering and ultimate death. Anarchism is not 
the Nemesis for individual or social error, as is 
freely claimed; anarchism may portray vengeance, 


44 


SOCIALISM 


but it cannot be considered the “Divine Ven¬ 
geance” of the ancient Greeks; even in its soph¬ 
istry it can never pass as retributive justice. An¬ 
archism is born of failure, mental astigmatism and 
prejudice; it is nurtured by suspicion, hallucina¬ 
tion and delusion; it sets back the clock, blurs 
vision, deadens the senses, and walks in the way 
of phantoms; it pollutes the thought, harbors the 
unreal, serves despair, and ravishes right. 


CHAPTER VI 


Radicalism, Rationalism and Democracy 

R ADICALISM in modern politics has, 
through an erroneous conception of the root 
and true meaning of the word, come to 
describe the doctrine of pronounced changes in 
government or social institutions. To be branded 
a “Radical” in these days is almost as bad as to 
be called an “Extremist,” or even a “Revolution¬ 
ist.” The word “radical,” derived from the Latin, 
means that which pertains to the root or proceeds 
directly from the root of a thing. Radicalism is, 
therefore, not an intermediate stratum between 
orthodox conservatism and anarchism, and all such 
conceptions of it are erroneous. In these days of 
conventional error, of drifting from the truth, of 
wandering from the source and essence of all that 
is enduring and eternal in life, to be radical is to 
turn to the root of things and seek to directly learn 
constructive and purifying wisdom from the Cre¬ 
ator, the source of all life and wisdom. 

We are told that a radical is one who agitates 
and urges the leveling of inequalities of conditions. 
This definition may be true or it may be false. On 
the other hand we know that anarchists urge the 
elimination of all government, desire no social 
institutions and unpractically seek to eliminate all 
inequalities. 

True radicalism urges good government, demo- 


4,5 


46 


SOCIALISM 


cratic in principle and representative of the people; 
purged from bossism, graft, and class predomi¬ 
nance, seeking only to administer justice based on 
laws, founded on truth. It would delve into causes 
and get to the source and root of all things, rather 
than theorize on effects. Radicalism diagnoses 
disease and strives to eliminate error without inter¬ 
rupting or disturbing the performance of the vital 
functions. The basic thoughts and essential prin¬ 
ciples of radicalism are diametrically opposed to 
those of anarchism. Radicalism is positive and 
progressive; it aspires, has definite purpose and is 
spiritual. Anarchism is negative, destructive and 
aimless. The term radicalism has been outra¬ 
geously abused in politics, but that is the fault of 
the users and not the principle. The upsetting of 
the tried and proven, the uprooting of the solid 
foundations of a stable society, the elimination of 
law and order, and the destructive attacks on good 
government, are not radicalism but anarchism. 
Radicalism preaches freedom of thought, religious 
freedom, emancipation and political freedom, but 
it does not teach mental and social equality. It is 
not a bidder at the auction of ever-changing popu¬ 
larity; it maintains that men are equal spiritually 
and politically, but as long as they vary in mental 
and physical endowment, so they will vary in char¬ 
acteristics, that will ever result in various degrees 
of knowledge, culture and social adaptability. 
Radicalism maintains that aristocracy should and 
will be founded on the development of the brain 
and heart and not on fate and avarice. Radicalism 
is the tool of evolution; it checks up the atoms 


SOCIALISM 


47 


that, combined, make for progress; it assures man¬ 
kind that the new link of knowledge is being welded 
into the true chain of universal advance. The 
radical is the organizer and guard of those forces 
which make for truth and lasting civilization. 
Progress to be lasting must be welded and become 
thoroughly rooted into the great forces of life, 
grounded in eternal and never changing truth. 

Radicalism, like young Siegfried of the Nibel- 
ungs, may melt down the old weapons into new 
ones; but the metal, to be effective, must be that 
sent by the Creator to draw man through the 
phases of progressive evolution nearer to Himself. 

True revolution is a pronounced step, a con¬ 
spicuous advance in the progress of evolution. 
Through such non-anarchical, transitional periods 
of human advancement, was this country born and 
nurtured to adolescence. Jefferson, in his first 
inaugural address in 1801, discusses most fittingly 
the fruits of the inspired radicalism of his period, 
when he said: “We stand for equal and exact jus¬ 
tice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, 
religious or political; peace, commerce and honest 
friendships with all nations,—the preservation of 
the general government in its whole constitutional 
vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home 
and safety abroad,—these principles form the 
bright constellation which has gone before us and 
guided our steps through an age of revolution and 
reformation.” By rationalism should all the mul¬ 
titudinous doctrines of the day be tested, but it 
should be the rationalism of the complete man 
with the human mind controlled by the spirit, and 



48 


SOCIALISM 


not the rationalism of mortal ignorance, which 
denies what it cannot with physical senses see and 
understand. Many a so-called rationalist today 
is a false reasoner. In the realm of Christian relig¬ 
ion, a rationalist may object to humanity’s being 
“plucked as a brand from the burning,” and rightly 
so; but instead of scorning religion, the true ration¬ 
alist, the radical of religion, works to “put out the 
fire.” Mental reasoning of itself is cold and many 
so-called rationalists are but materialistic nihilists, 
negative agnostics, who have been described as 
those who “find in the soul of man nothing but 
selfishness, no basis of human integrity but in the 
interest of self-preservation, no virtue but in lack 
of opportunity, no altruism but in some form of 
self-indulgence, no religion but in fear of future 
punishment.” 

True rationalism is not blind faith; it goes into 
the depths with a rope firmly secured to solid 
earth and to firmly establish truth. Growth de¬ 
mands free speculation and history shows how 
knowledge has grown since restrictions on inquiry 
into the mysteries of life and things have been 
removed. The advances made through liberated 
thought, during the past century, would have 
seemed diabolical to the slaves of medievalism, but 
such advances have been made in spite of material¬ 
ism and solely because of rationalism, founded on 
the spirit of life and that radicalism which seeks 
for and must learn and build upon eternal truth. 
Religious fanatics have no faith, no spirit; they are 
afraid of their suppressed doubts and finiteness. 
If they believed absolutely in truth and love, they 


SOCIALISM 49 

could not become irrational, they could not possibly 
persecute others. 

“Who lights the fagot? 

Not the full faith, but the lurking doubt.” 

Worldly rulers and governments have to learn 
the same eternally rational and radical truths that 
the Spirit of Life is forcing upon the Church. 
Government, like the Church, has to be recon¬ 
structed, robbed of false beliefs and rebuilt upon 
the firm foundation of eternal justice and univer¬ 
sal law. The French Revolution of riotous anarchy 
did not alleviate the distress of the poor; it created 
some reforms, but it led to many other revolutions 
and social upheavals. After all the hysterical 
exploitations of the ideal represented by hberty, 
equality and fraternity, after France had given 
the blood of her best sons to promote an ideal 
founded on error, we find one of the many reac¬ 
tions of such unspiritual attempts at progress in 
the cry of the starving workmen at Lyons in 1831: 
“We must live working or we shall die fighting.” 

Democracy — the rule of the people — is the 
government of the future. It is government by 
popular representation, in which the supreme 
power is retained and directly exercised by the 
people. The rule of autocracies, despotisms and 
plutocracies must pass, either by reform or revo¬ 
lution, but the sure working law of evolution de¬ 
mands that they be supplanted by the rule of the 
people; the legislation of the many, for the many, 
and not of the few over the many. Revolution is 
rendered superfluous by democracy, and anarchism 



50 


SOCIALISM 


cannot take root in any country where the people 
rule. Representative government was at one time 
a revolutionary innovation. A so-called revolution¬ 
ary movement is, at times, merely a new move¬ 
ment looking toward pronounced change. It is 
to be regretted that in the past, many worthy re¬ 
form movements have been attended with the exer¬ 
cise of force, but as is the case of the rebellion of 
our original colonies against oppressive and arbi¬ 
trary taxation without representation, this has 
generally been due to the powers in possession 
attempting to suppress such movements by the 
exercise of force. 

Democracy, as represented in our own Repub¬ 
lic, should be expressed in a commonwealth gov¬ 
erned for the common weal. Our faces are point¬ 
ing right; we are far in advance of other nations, 
but our methods of government need as much puri¬ 
fication and purging by true rationalism and radi¬ 
calism, as do many other generally termed less 
progressive nations. We need not and will not 
tolerate either revolution or anarchy, but the coun¬ 
try should be true to its ideals and basic principles. 
We should enjoy a true government by the people, 
not an oligarchy of professional politicians and 
spoilsmen, who place power and party first, and 
truth with justice afterwards. During the Tariff 
Revision of the recently elected, so-called Demo¬ 
cratic Party, facts were not desired unless they 
conformed with a predetermined policy of the 
Party Oligarchy. A representative elected by the 
people said, “We don’t care for the truth, our 
minds are made up.” A prominent Senator said: 



SOCIALISM 


51 


“I do not care to refute what-said. He was 

in error, but I have too much prudence and must 
consider my Party.” Such principles are not even 
as worthy as the inhuman, prejudiced slogan, “My 
country right or wrong.” It is not even “my party 
right or wrong”; it is the political Oligarchy of 
“my party” which cares only for power, “right or 
wrong.” 

The Democratic Party is probably no worse 
than other American political parties; and fusion, 
independent reform, citizen and socialistic move¬ 
ments, whenever successful in American local poli¬ 
tics, have soon degenerated into machine politics, 
full of intrigue and policy; and if the life of the 
movement is long enough, corruption and plunder 
of the many for the benefit of the few, seem to be¬ 
come inevitable. The purification of politics by 
impractical men, or by any machine of men, is no 
purification at all. We need no professional poli¬ 
ticians, no dictators of policy, no grafters or spoils¬ 
men selling protection, favors of political jobs, or 
creating positions for their loyal henchmen. When 
our country is run like a large, efficient corpora¬ 
tion, where merit and fitness for positions are de¬ 
manded and where waste is abhorred, then we will 
enjoy liberty and true representation; taxes will 
be reduced, industry encouraged, capital and labor 
equally protected, and our land, instead of being 
a burlesque on democracy, will be a true expres¬ 
sion of democratic government, which is the prac¬ 
tical answer to the threats of the revolutionist and 
anarchist and to the impractical dream of the 
socialist. 



CHAPTER VII 


Communism—Utopian Socialism of Old 
OMMUNISM is Utopian Socialism; it was 



the doctrine of all socialists until about the 


middle of the Nineteenth Century. It can 
be defined as a scheme to equalize all the social, 
environmental and economic conditions of life by 
the abolition of all class distinctions, privileges and 
inequalities of every kind, especially those which 
pertain to the possession of property. 

It must not be confused with Communalism, 
which is a French theory of government, urging 
the forming of certain cities or districts into com¬ 
munes, each of which is to have the privilege of an 
independent state; the National Government being 
merely a confederation of such states with limited 
powers. The Commune of Paris in 1871, endeav¬ 
ored for more than two months to set up its author¬ 
ity against the National Assembly at Versailles. 
The Communal Movement, antagonistic to central¬ 
ized National Government, has been a political and 
not an economic movement; it recalls the Mediaeval 
Communes, at one time very common, especially 
in Germany, and must be considered as an anarch¬ 
ical and retrogressive movement. 

The socialistic plan of communism is not the 
product of this age of freedom; it is as old as his¬ 
tory, as old as man. Primitive man adopted com¬ 
munism in his early stages of existence to obtain 


52 


SOCIALISM 


53 


strength through unity. His motive was self-love 
expressed in self-protection; if man had refused 
to be socialized he would undoubtedly have been 
annihilated by animals far larger, faster and 
stronger than himself. It has been estimated that 
95 per cent, of the total period of human existence 
has been lived by man in crude tribal communism. 
Through the ages of recorded history, socialism 
has taught what in reality is a return to the first 
principles of social life; it is, therefore, a retro¬ 
gressive and not a progressive movement. 

In the “Republic,” Plato advocates Communism. 
He would completely change existing social life. 
Children removed from parents would be nurtured 
and educated under the supervision of the State; 
the “blasphemous nonsense with which mothers 
fool the manhood out of their children” would be 
eliminated. The occupation and marriage of each 
citizen, and the number of births, would be con¬ 
trolled by the officials of the State. The most per¬ 
fect equality of conditions and careers was to be 
obtained; women would be trained like men and 
no doors of opportunity leading to careers or 
worthy ambitions denied them; yet Plato expresses 
the prejudices of his day, when he says that Mon¬ 
ogamy is mere exclusive possession of property 
that should be for the benefit of the public, and 
“the wife is part and parcel of the property of her 
husband.” He asserts that the State should pro¬ 
vide for all; therefore, inequalities and rivalry be¬ 
tween rich and poor would cease. Plato recognized 
the absolute inequalities of men, when he states 
that although there would be no exclusiveness of 




54 


SOCIALISM 


birth, the citizens of his Republic would be divided 
into classes according to their capacity and ability. 

Aristotle said: “Justice is thought to be and is 
equality; not, however, for all, but only for equals. 
And inequality is thought to be and is justice; 
neither is this for all but only for unequals.” This 
same thought has been well expressed by Menger: 
“There is no greater inequality than the equal 
treatment of unequals.” 

Lycurgus, of the Ninth Century B. C., was the 
reputed founder of the Spartan Constitution. He 
is said to have promoted certain socialistic reforms, 
such as a Citizens’ Assembly, prohibition of Gold 
and Silver Currency, and the division of land into 
equal lots, but these traditions cannot be verified. 

Solon, the great law-giver of the Sixth and 
Seventh Centuries B. C., was impressed with the 
tyrannical attitude of the rich toward the poor and 
the evil of unregulated aristocracy, with the unre¬ 
strained exploitation of capital. He eliminated the 
prevailing practice of giving one’s self as security 
for a loan, thus doing away with a diabolical sys¬ 
tem of extending slavery; he freed debtors; regu¬ 
lated the accumulation of land and rate of interest; 
but he refused to sanction equal division of land 
or wealth. Solon was the founder of Democracy; 
he instituted courts of justice and juries selected 
by lot; but in reality his government was a moder¬ 
ate Oligarchy with four clearly defined classes, and 
his reforms did not tend toward socialism. In the 
Timaeus Dialogue of Plato, Socrates is told of a 
tradition handed down by Solon that nine thousand 
years previously, before the great deluge, Athens 


SOCIALISM 


55 


was the leading city of the world, pre-eminent for 
the excellence of her laws. The greatest act of 
these ancient Athenians had been to resist an inva¬ 
sion from the great island of Atlantis, when all 
other nations had been overwhelmed by the forces 
emanating from this mystical land of the sea. At¬ 
lantis had been described by an Egyptian Priest 
as a mighty power, a great and wonderful empire 
which became inundated in a day of violent rain, 
flood and earthquake, and vanished below the sur¬ 
face of the great seas. A Spanish writer in 1552 
suggested that the newly discovered continent of 
America was the Atlantis of the ancients, the same 
Atlantis which Plato describes in Critias. 

A short time before his death in 1626, Francis 
Bacon wrote “The New Atlantis,” but he placed 
his imaginary island in the Pacific Ocean, between 
America and China. This ideal land was perme¬ 
ated with a spirit of religion “animating the whole 
with love of men and honor of God.” Bacon de¬ 
scribes a weak form of Communism, as exclusive¬ 
ness of a people which maintained a trade “only 
for God’s first creature, which was Light; to have 
light of the growth of all parts of the world.” 
Bacon considered that knowledge obtained from 
other lands was a necessary foundation upon which, 
with research and concentration, an abiding struc¬ 
ture of wisdom could be reared, and this knowl¬ 
edge he affirms is the prime requisite for success, 
development and happiness. He does not advo¬ 
cate equality of man; he has chambers befitting the 
rank and importance of men. His ideal is a just 
government, with no poor or distressed. “The 


56 


SOCIALISM 


King,” he says, “is debtor to no man but for propa¬ 
gation of his subjects.” The Tirsan, a father of 
thirty children, above the age of three, is honored, 
but no equality of sexes is advocated, for while all 
honor the father of the family, the mother at the 
Feast sits in a gallery, unseen and unhonored. 
Polygamy is unknown in Atlantis, and no mar¬ 
riage can be made without consent. Bacon dwells 
upon the practice of the doctrine of Christ and the 
nation’s great thirst for knowledge. He loves to 
describe pomp, splendor and form, and his attempt 
to depict an ideal land is marred by his class con¬ 
sciousness and his old-fashioned conception of re¬ 
ligion. Atlantis is really ruled by Solomon’s 
House and not by Governors or Kings, for knowl¬ 
edge is placed on the pinnacle of power and fame. 
“The end of all foundations is the knowledge of 
causes and secret motions of things; the enlarging 
of the bounds of human empire to the effecting of 
all things possible”; and he adds, “for upon every 
invention of value we erect a statue to the inventor 
and give him a liberal and honorable reward.” 
Bacon’s visionary land of Ideality did not give 
much consideration to the common people. It was 
a veritable heaven for the scholar and inventor; 
knowledge was of all things the greatest boon, and 
the learned man headed all society, being the true 
aristocrat of the race. Bacon was one of the 
world’s greatest prophets of investigation and 
learned achievement; he was not a great investi¬ 
gator himself, and his art of interpretation, as ex¬ 
emplified in his “Novum Organum,” proved disap¬ 
pointing and impossible. He never finished his 


SOCIALISM 


57 


“New Atlantis,” and the second section of the book 
in which he was to describe its laws, proved too 
formidable for him. He probably felt the difficulty 
of creating a code which would eliminate all crime, 
avarice, discontent, and poverty from a land of 
such pronounced authority, conventions and im¬ 
practical modes of life. Nevertheless, Bacon’s 
work stimulated science and research and it has 
greatly affected, not the growth of Socialism and 
Communism, but of civilization and knowledge. 
Bacon probably felt, as later expressed by Keats, 
that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye 
know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 

Communism was practiced by the early Chris¬ 
tians, not as abnegation of private property, but as 
voluntary sharing of it. We are told that “The 
Essenes and the Therapeutse in Palestine had a 
strict form of Communism, and the former required 
the surrender of individual property.” In the 
Middle Ages various religious sects, followed by 
Christian and Buddhist Monastic Orders, were 
communistic with common property and common 
enjoyment of it. The basic idea of socialism has 
found advocates in every century of the Age of 
Tradition and in many different countries; and for 
two or three thousand years these movements have 
expressed a deep dissatisfaction with existent po¬ 
litical and economic conditions. 

In 1516 Sir Thomas More published his famous 
“Utopia.” Under the fiction of an ideal state, 
undoubtedly inspired by Plato’s Republic, he ex¬ 
pressed his optimistic and impractical political and 
economic ideals of reform. Utopia means “no 


58 


SOCIALISM 


place,” and More, giving the name to an imaginary 
island, also unconsciously gave the name to the 
socialism of Communism, now branded the world 
over as “Utopian.” More describes a “happy 
country” governed by principles based upon pop¬ 
ular elections. Community of goods prevailed and 
officials distributed the instruments of production 
among the people; all wealth resulting from the 
industry of all was equally divided among all; not 
in money, however, for money was unknown. 
More advanced beyond Plato in his appreciation 
of the sacredness of family relations and fidelity 
to marriage vows and suggested no community of 
wives. He considered marriage indispensable to 
the well being of modern society, and in this respect 
his vision was clearer than many of his predecessors 
and most of the later day communists. Although 
More, impressed by Christian teachings, discoun¬ 
tenanced community of wives, he, nevertheless, ad¬ 
vocated slavery—a gross inconsistency—maintain¬ 
ing that he would have to use slaves in Utopia to 
do all the disagreeable work. He contended that 
in a communistic state “all the uneasy and sordid 
services”—laborious, dangerous or offensive—must 
be rendered by human beings operating under 
compulsion. Who would be the slaves? Other less 
enlightened races possibly; or Utopians convicted 
of crime instead of being imprisoned would be 
condemned to slavery. Brilliant as More’s mind 
undoubtedly was, he has given the world a hodge¬ 
podge of impractical pictures in his Utopia. He 
would maintain private family life, but all meals 
should be taken in common, “rendered attractive 


SOCIALISM 


59 


by the accompaniment of sweet strains of music, 
while the air was filled by the scent of the most 
delicate perfumes.” Women must work like the 
men; there shall be no idle individual—“And this 
you will easily apprehend,” he says, “if you con¬ 
sider how great a part of all other nations is quite 
idle. First, women generally do little, who are the 
half of mankind.” How little More could have 
known of the unceasing labor of the women of the 
peasant and lower classes, of their unceasing strug¬ 
gle for a mere existence and for the maintenance 
of their families, their only possessions. No reward 
here or hereafter can ever repay the Great Mothers 
of the majority of the surviving race. Yet these 
faithful heroines are classed as “Idle Individuals.” 

More’s “Utopia” was not responsible for his 
ultimate disfavor with Henry VIII. In his rela¬ 
tion to his fellows he showed no tendency toward 
socialism and preached none. As Counsellor to the 
King, he displayed pronounced ability, loyalty and 
conscience. He retired into private life, a poor 
man, rather than approve officially of his King’s 
action in proclaiming himself the Head of the 
Church, in order that his well known lax ideas of 
marriage and divorce might be sanctioned and 
materialistic benefits wrested from Rome. More 
was executed for “maliciously, traitorously and 
diabolically” denying the right of the King to be¬ 
come at will the “Supreme Head” of the Church. 
He never expressed an opinion disloyal or traitor¬ 
ous to his Monarch, but he was indicted for trea¬ 
son, when in response to persistent questioning, he 
replied to the King’s messenger sent to him in the 


60 


SOCIALISM 


Tower: “Suppose that Parliament should make 
a law, that God should be not God, would you 
then say God were not God? No more can Parlia¬ 
ment make the King the Supreme Head of the 
Church.” The vengeance of Henry at More for 
expressing, by passive non-concurrence, his dis¬ 
approval of the King’s theory of infallibility, was 
further manifested when he confiscated the small 
property of More, legally assigned to his wife, and 
drove Lady More and her children penniless from 
their home. This incident only serves to illustrate 
the power, tyranny and injustice of Kings. Em¬ 
peror Charles fittingly said of Henry’s crime: “If 
we had been master of such a servant, we would 
rather have lost the best city of our dominions than 
have lost such a worthy counsellor.” 

William Morris, English poet and artist of the 
last century, had “the divine rage against the com¬ 
petitive system.” His life was a continual protest 
against commercialism. At one time he was a 
fanatical Socialist and an advocate of Communism; 
his book “News from Nowhere” was a peep into the 
“Merrie England” of two centuries hence. There 
is nothing new in Morris’ work. It is the artist’s 
protest against a low standard of architecture, ugli¬ 
ness and the machine age, rather than a truly 
socialistic work based on justice and economics. 
Swinburne said of Morris that he “was always 
more truly impressed by literature than by life”; 
and it is true that the socialism of Morris was not 
inspired by real love of man; at heart it was but 
a passionate enthusiasm for an impossible artistic 
ideal. Morris was interested in things rather than 


SOCIALISM 


61 


in men, and his life was lived in an atmosphere of 
Medievalism. Morris’ Utopia is a land of handi¬ 
craft, of banded workshops for handwork, with no 
factories and modern labor-saving machinery. His 
contempt for machinery was great and coupled 
with it was a strange fear emanating from both art 
and economics. He wrote: 

“Fast and faster our iron master, 

The thing we made, forever drives.” 

He refers to the world’s wonderful Nineteenth 
Century of progress—“The great achievement of 
the century was the making of machines which 
were wonders of invention, skill and patience, and 
which were used for the production of measureless 
quantities of worthless makeshifts,” adding: “It 
was a current jest of the times that the wares were 
made to sell and not to use.” The great manu¬ 
facturing centers were an eye-sore to the artist- 
socialist, so he removes them, saying that “manu¬ 
facture serves no useful purpose but that of the 
gambling market.” Morris asserts that the so- 
called science of the century was merely an appen¬ 
dage to the commercial system, but he admits that 
in his ideal, visionary land there could not be new 
inventions.—“The last epoch did all that for us.” 
The Morris Utopia is, therefore, a land without 
any possibility of further progress or development. 
He calls our comfort “mere stuffy inconvenience,” 
and our civilization “organized misery.” He de¬ 
spises the rawness of our own land, saying that “for 
nearly a hundred years the people of North Amer¬ 
ica have been engaged in gradually making a dwell- 


62 


SOCIALISM 


ing-place out of a stinking dust-heap.” His chap¬ 
ter on Politics is one brief paragraph, the gist of 
which is: “We are very well off as to politics—be¬ 
cause we have none.” Punishment for crime is left 
to the conscience of the evil-doer; stores for sale 
of goods are “swindling dens”; money is unknown 
and private property does not exist; Morris advo¬ 
cates marriages of convenience; large or small 
houses for many or few families; open door for all; 
and like More’s Utopians, they take their meals 
collectively, in Dining Halls, to the strains of 
sweet music. Morris says that the reward of labor 
is life, and man in the performance of his work, 
which is apparently voluntary and principally 
agricultural, gets the “same wage which God gets.” 
Morris pictures an impossible, impracticable 
Utopia, showing the prejudice of the artist coupled 
with a positive lack of knowledge of human nature. 
He pictures an artistic heaven, populated with 
gods, but lacking in all that makes life worth while. 

The fundamental facts of human nature have 
wrecked every attempt at Communism, no matter 
how much their founders have attempted to antici¬ 
pate mankind’s variability, inherent selfishness, and 
peculiar characteristics. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Communism—Owens System of Social 
Reconstruction 

C OMMUNISM, the old order of primitive 
human life, is the imaginative and Utopian 
Socialism of the Middle Ages. It never be¬ 
came a living force or potent movement because 
of its conspicuous impracticability. Modern, scien¬ 
tific socialism may condemn Communism, but until 
a few decades ago Communism was pure Social¬ 
ism ; even now it is one of the many kinds of social¬ 
ism advocated by enthusiasts and one of the two 
prime divisions of modern socialism. The modern 
movement can be said to have commenced with 
Robert Owen, the British cotton-mill operator and 
social reformer. In 1817 he presented to a parlia¬ 
mentary committee a scheme for a socialistic com¬ 
munity. The word Socialism first appeared in the 
“Poor Man’s Guardian” in 1833, and it was used 
by Owen two years later to describe his scheme for 
Social Reconstruction; it was also used in connec¬ 
tion with the theories of the communists, Saint- 
Simon and Fourier, then agitating social reform 
in France. 

Owen was not originally a flighty sentimentalist, 
but a successful business man. He was born of 
humble parents and his school education termin¬ 
ated at nine years of age; when only nineteen he 
became manager of a cotton-mill, and he was the 
first to import, and successfully use, American cot- 

63 


64 


SOCIALISM 


ton in Britain. He soon became the acknowledged 
leader of the cotton spinning trade and his re¬ 
sourcefulness and originality were proverbial. It 
was Owen, the practical genius of industry, who 
revived socialism from the dying embers of imprac¬ 
tical theory; but, in his attempt to right the wrongs 
of the working classes, to elevate the masses, and 
ameliorate their conditions, even Owen was swept 
away by philanthropy into a well-meaning but 
impractical scheme of communism based on his 
theory of Labor and Economics. He died in 1858, 
not what he could have been,—the greatest prac¬ 
tical benefactor of the working classes and the 
most successful, humane and liberal-minded em¬ 
ployer of his day, but an unbalanced secular-social¬ 
ist, discredited by manufacturers, considered fanat¬ 
ical and impractical by the working classes, athe¬ 
istic by spiritually-minded people, and more of a 
menace than a benefactor of society. Owen’s views 
on marriage were very lax; his conversation in 
later years was apt to be offensive; his disappoint¬ 
ments in the exploitation of his theories disturbed 
his mind, and before his death he drifted into 
spiritualism. 

J. S. Mill, the English philosopher and econo¬ 
mist, referring to the communistic socialism of 
Owen and his contemporaries, wrote: “Between 
communism with all its chances and the present 
state of society, with all its sufferings and injustice, 
—all the differences, great or small, of commun¬ 
ism would be but as dust in the balance.” Mill 
maintained that fundamentally it is all a question 
of securing and preserving the maximum of true 


SOCIALISM 


65 


individual liberty; he would “have nothing that 
puts this liberty in jeopardy.” 

Robert Owen’s practical work to improve the 
working classes was conducted at New Lanark, 
where he was part owner of a large mill. About 
two thousand hands were employed, and of these, 
about one-quarter were children, most of whom 
were brought, when only five or six years of age, 
from the poor houses of the large Scotch cities. 
The conditions in the factory, and all similar mills, 
were vile, the hours long, the work “demoralizing 
drudgery”; sanitation was unknown and education 
neglected. Owen did a man’s task in the improve¬ 
ment of existing conditions. His work was timely, 
truly philanthropic and noble; the mill prospered, 
but Owen was carried away by his own uncurbed 
enthusiasm. His partners endeavored to check 
his exploitations, but he bought them out and 
formed a new company, from which he ultimately 
resigned because of continued friction. 

Owen endeavored to substitute a crude belief in 
what he believed was original with him, for true 
religion. He maintained that man is not in any 
way responsible for what he does; that man does 
not form his own character by thoughts and deeds, 
but that character is formed by circumstances over 
which man has no control. He preached, there¬ 
fore, irresponsibility of man, and this most per¬ 
nicious doctrine is the real basis of Owen’s system 
of Social Reconstruction. A poet of the period, 
in a poem dedicated to Owen, aptly expresses the 
doctrine of the Social Reformer: 


66 


SOCIALISM 


“We are the creatures of external things 
Acting on inward organs, and are made 
To think and do whate’er our tutors please. 
What folly, then, to punish or reward 
For deeds o’er which we never held a curb! 
What woful ignorance, to teach the crime 
And then chastise the pupil for his guilt!” 

His plan to create a proper environment around 
mankind was the only virtue of his scheme. Owen 
advocated before Parliament the subordination of 
machinery, which seems to have always been a 
socialistic principle. He urged that communities 
be established, consisting of twelve hundred per¬ 
sons, settled on about twelve hundred acres, all 
living in one large, common building, built as an 
apartment house, each family to have its private 
apartment, but meals to be served in a common 
dining room and food prepared in a public kitchen. 
All children at three years of age should be re¬ 
moved from their parents and be brought up by 
the community. Work would be required of all, 
and the enjoyment of the fruit of work should be 
equal for all. He later advocated communities 
of various sizes, each self-contained and indepen¬ 
dent. As such communities “should increase in 
number, unions of them, federatively united, shall 
be formed in circles of tens, hundreds and thou¬ 
sands until they should embrace the whole world 
in one great republic with a common interest.” 
Notwithstanding Owen’s growing fanaticism, in 
all probability he would have been guided, re¬ 
strained and helped by Britain’s most influential 


SOCIALISM 


67 


leaders, and his name would have come down in 
history as one of the greatest Social Reformers of 
the world, had he not lost his head in a public 
meeting in London and denounced, in no uncertain 
terms, every form of religion. No infidel, hostile 
to religion in all its phases, and to the Eternal 
Spirit of all life, could ever suggest an acceptable 
reform to the humblest worker of Britain or to 
any other class who refuse to separate love and 
true philanthropy from the Eternal Source of all 
such virtues. 

Owen commenced the establishment of commu¬ 
nities in 1825, at Orbiston, near Glasgow, Scotland, 
and the same year he acquired New Harmony, 
Indiana, from the Rappists—the old Shakers 
Society. He also formed many other communities 
in the United States, all of which had a brief exist¬ 
ence. It has been said that “the members were 
of the most motley description, many worthy peo¬ 
ple of the highest aims being mixed with vagrants, 
adventurers, and crotchety, wrong-headed enthu¬ 
siasts.” Owen made further attempts, in 1839, to 
promote and demonstrate his ideal. Communities 
were established in Clare County, Ireland, and also 
in Hampshire, England; the latter soon failed and 
the former was ruined by the gambling of the 
management. 

Brooks says: “Communism captivates at the 
same time the saint and the loafer. It offers to 
the imagination what the heroic are glad to give, 
and to the dead-beat what he is greedy to take.” 
An old English poem tells us of the attitude of 


68 


SOCIALISM 


Morris’ contemporaries toward Utopian theories 
of communistic life. 

“What is a Communist? One that hath yearnings 
For equal division of unequal earnings. 

Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing 

To fork out his penny, and pocket your shilling.” 

Communism, or Utopian Socialism, preaches the 
doctrine of equality in all things. It advocates a 
Parochial Autonomy, the destruction by absorp¬ 
tion of private property for the benefit of the com¬ 
munity, the absolute political and social equality 
of mankind, the elimination of individual wealth 
and of currency. And yet, if the members form¬ 
ing a community had a goodly share of this world’s 
goods and another community were formed of 
poorer people, would we not have wealth or prop¬ 
erty inequalities in communities? Again, one com¬ 
munity may establish itself on rich agricultural 
or mining ground and soon grow rich as compared 
with a community located less favorably. How 
can the equality in worldly goods of the members 
of one community ever result in the equalization of 
wealth over the entire country or world? Once 
more, the quality of the inmates of a community 
would prove a great factor in the virility of the 
Social Colony; if a community of average persons 
fails to succeed in its battle with life, how quickly 
would an aggregation of drones rush into failure 
and bankruptcy? 


CHAPTER IX 


French Communism — Saint-Simon and Fourier 

T HE Nineteenth Century revival of Socialism 
has been generally attributed to the indus¬ 
trial revolution, with its Bourgeois avarice 
in Britain and the revolution of thought and free¬ 
dom of the Press, which found its most positive 
expression in France. Owen worked under the 
influence of British industrialism; but in France, 
Saint-Simon and Fourier had before them “the 
hoary abuses of an idle and privileged feudalism, 
shaken by the Revolution but still strong in 
Europe, and in France, as elsewhere, powerfully 
revived after Waterloo.” Comte Henri de Saint- 
Simon, born in 1760, was the founder of French 
socialism. He was an ambitious aristocrat and 
accumulated a fortune in land speculation. He 
assisted the American colonies in their rebellion 
against British oppression, but took no part in the 
French Revolution. At forty he married most 
unhappily, lost his property, and during the last 
twenty-five years of his life was reduced to pov¬ 
erty and distress. Kirkup tells us that at one 
time he lived on the generosity of a former valet, 
and in 1823 attempted suicide in despair. And this 
is the man who first conceived the Panama Canal 
and whose servant was ordered to awaken him 
each morning with the words: “Remember, Mon¬ 
sieur le Comte, that you have great things to do.” 


70 


SOCIALISM 


Saint-Simon, like Owen of England, was not a 
Revolutionist; as Owen presented his scheme for 
Social Reform to the British Parliament, so Saint- 
Simon appealed to Louis XVIII of France, to 
create a state of workers directed by modern sci¬ 
ence, with centralized authority as represented by 
the State. Saint-Simon interpreted Christianity 
to mean that all men should act toward each other 
as brethren. “The whole of society,” he wrote, 
“ought to strive towards the amelioration of the 
moral and physical existence of the poorest class; 
society ought to organize itself in the way best 
adapted for attaining this end.” 

The French School of the Saint-Simonian Faith 
commenced its turbulent career in 1831. The 
members lived out of a common purse, wore queer 
prescribed clothes, and practiced communism; dis¬ 
sensions soon arose and Bazard, the strongest and 
most logical man of the School, seceded, leaving 
the leadership to Enfantine, whose purpose was 
the establishment of an arrogant and “fantastic 
sacerdotalism” with lax notions as to marriage and 
the relations of the sexes. After about a year’s 
existence, the sect was condemned and broken up, 
for proceedings prejudicial to the morals and well¬ 
being of the State. In official declarations, the 
Society affirmed its belief in the Christian law of 
marriage, but Enfantine fell, we are told, into “a 
prurient and fantastic latitudinarianism, which 
made the School a scandal to France.” 

The most pronounced features of Saint-Simon’s 
socialism are the placing of each man according to 
his peculiar ability and characteristics, and the 


SOCIALISM 


71 


rewarding of each man according to the impor¬ 
tance, quality and amount of work performed,— 
truly a magnificent thought, but unfortunately it 
never got beyond a hope or belief. The vices of 
Saint-Simon’s followers killed the virtues of their 
creed. Kirkup sums up the inevitable disaster of 
the movement when he says: “The most prominent 
portion of the School attacked social order in its 
essential point—the family morality. Thus it hap¬ 
pened that a School which attracted so many of 
the most brilliant and promising young men of 
France, which was so striking and original in its 
criticism of the existing condition of things, which 
was so strong in the spirit of initiative, and was in 
many ways so noble, unselfish and aspiring, sank 
amidst the laughter and indignation of a scandal¬ 
ized society.” 

Francois Fourier was the noblest of Utopian 
socialists. His writings antedated Owen and Saint- 
Simon, but the Fourier Communistic Movement of 
Socialism did not gain much impetus until the 
power and work of his contemporaries had begun 
to wane. Fourier was born at Besan^on, France, 
in 1772; his father was a tradesman in good cir¬ 
cumstances. In early life Francis, as a result of 
his shop experience, travelling, and work in a mer¬ 
chant’s office, became convinced that existent social 
conditions, the result of prevailing principles of 
competition, were essentially imperfect and im¬ 
moral. We are told that when five years of age 
he was whipped for telling a customer, in his 
father’s store, the truth about some goods he was 
considering purchasing; at twenty-seven he had to 


72 


SOCIALISM 


participate in the destruction of large quantities of 
rice which had become unfit for use, it having been 
held during a period of great scarcity and actual 
want, in order that the owner might realize an 
exorbitant price for it. Fourier was a natural 
optimist with a mental equipment at times touch¬ 
ing greatness, but mostly occupied with absurd¬ 
ities that expressed themselves in extravagant fan¬ 
tastical theories and writings. He was in private 
life, a retiring and extremely sensitive man, a 
model of simplicity and kindliness. His ideals 
were high and his career was marked with unwaver¬ 
ing integrity and disinterested devotion; and yet 
his writings were at times uncouth, obscure and 
unintelligible. Fourier likened his claimed discov¬ 
ery of the harmonious principle of human passions 
to Newton’s discovery of attraction or harmony 
between material bodies. In order that man might 
attain this much desired harmony between his fun¬ 
damental forces, which he characterized as social, 
animal, organic and material, he advocated com¬ 
munistic life with co-operative industry. 

Fourier’s fantastic psychological and cosmo- 
graphical schemes are too complex to admit of a de¬ 
scription here. He admitted that his views on the 
age of the world and his statement that it had thirty- 
three thousand more years to reach its prime, were 
immaterial to his system, but he urged the study of 
his twelve radical human passions with the great 
social passion, “Uniteisme.” Fourier advocated the 
establishment of independent “phalanges,” each 
covering a square league of land and being popu¬ 
lated with four hundred families, or eighteen hun- 


SOCIALISM 


73 


dred persons; the individuals of the community to 
band themselves into social units of less than ten 
persons, and about thirty such units to form a social 
series, all grouping in harmony with his principles 
of attraction and of “free elective affinity.” The liv¬ 
ing abodes would all be under one roof, named the 
Phalanstere; officials would be elected, phalanges 
would combine into federations and ultimately 
there would be a world-wide federation with its 
great illustrious chief located at Constantinople, 
the Capital of the World. Here we see a strange 
mixture suggestive of an autocratic socialism. 

Fourier was a staunch advocate of Communism, 
but he made provisions for some local and individual 
freedom. He admitted private capital brought 
under certain social control. Every member of each 
Phalanx should be granted the minimum of subsis¬ 
tence; the remainder of the total income of the 
Colony to be divided, distributing five parts to 
labor, four to capital and three to special talent. 
Fourier, therefore, had sufficient true vision to 
recognize inequality of talents, and he urged the 
prompt recognition and utilization of such talents 
for the public good. He also divided ordinary 
work into grades, paying the most for hard and 
menial labor, useful work next, and pleasant, con¬ 
genial work would receive the least pay of all. This 
reminds one of Morris’ Dustman or Garbage Col¬ 
lector, who figures in his Utopia as an exceedingly 
well and gaily dressed individual, a sort of Beau 
Brummel honored by the community. Fourier 
insisted that all individuals in each Phalanx should 


74 


SOCIALISM 


have the opportunity of becoming capitalists, thus 
again showing a practical knowledge of many of 
the essential fundamentals of progressive and so¬ 
cial life. Moreover, individual capital is perfectly 
mobile and the possessor of it obtains freedom of 
individuality, is independent of the possible 
tyranny of the majority, and can migrate to other 
Phalanges or travel at will. Fourier, in this re¬ 
spect, gives the communists of his day, and of the 
present and indeed all the adherents of Socialism, 
both Utopian and scientific, a good hard jolt and 
a much needed lesson. His ideas on marriage are 
free love, with the hope that free union would result 
in permanent marriages. 

Thus throughout his ingenious and elaborate 
specifications and creed for an idealistic Utopia, 
are worked sane, practical thoughts and inane im¬ 
moral ideas. His scheme is the most fantastical, 
inventive and thorough ever devised by human 
brain; it abounds in much that is worthy of study 
and emulation; much that is crude and chimerical, 
and much that is unworthy of any attention what¬ 
ever. Fourier’s life was spent in the working out 
and propagation of a better social order. Two 
attempts were made to establish Phalanges in 
France; several were attempted in our own country, 
but they all failed. We are told that during the 
last ten years of his life, Fourier waited in his 
apartment at noon every day for his wealthy phil¬ 
anthropic capitalist, who, his optimism convinced 
him, would appear to give the substantial backing 
which he always felt was alone necessary to prove 


SOCIALISM 


75 


the practicability of his scheme to improve the con¬ 
ditions of mankind. No wealthy patron appeared 
and Fourier died “from sheer heartache because 
the world wouldn’t listen to him.” 


CHAPTER X 


Communism, Equalitarianism and Democracy in 
America 

T HE recently discovered New World of 
North America, with its new people from 
the Old World pledged to Democracy, and 
with its vast territory and immeasurable natural 
resources, was a veritable Utopia to the restricted 
and circumscribed communists of Europe, and a 
Land of Promise to all Socialists. It became the 
home of the “International,” the harborer of the 
virtuous, passive and revolutionary socialists, and 
the retreat for Old World anarchists, whether of 
idealistic, incendiary or murderous intent. To this 
land, the original home of the Redskins, who for 
centuries had practiced communism, came all sorts 
and conditions of men, the bad and depraved, with 
the good and moral; and our country, shouting to 
freedom, became a melting pot of all nations, 
offering wide scope for the exercise of almost all 
human desires. During the Nineteenth Century 
North America was a most favorable setting for a 
great variety of picturesque attempts to realize 
social equality. 

Jefferson, elected in 1800 , had seen much service 
in France and was influenced by the Revolution. 
His persistent antagonism to Plamilton caused the 
formation of our two great surviving Political 
Parties. Jefferson was carried away with a per¬ 
verted idea of equality; he refused to recognize 


76 


SOCIALISM 


77 


any differences in rank, and discountenanced the 
use of all titles; even “Honorable” and “Mr.” were 
displeasing to him. He refused to ride in a coach 
to the Capitol for his inauguration, but walked, 
dressed in most ordinary clothes. His Cabinet, at 
his request, agreed that “when brought together in 
society, all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or 
domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office.” 
He effaced at his table and at receptions every 
form of class distinction. It is said that a Foreign 
Minister, appearing in the usual gold lace uniform 
to pay his respects and first official call on our 
President, was received with studied purpose by 
Jefferson in negligent undress and slippers down 
at the heel. Jefferson’s attempt at “the equal life” 
in Washington was doomed to failure. The British 
Minister informed his Government that condi¬ 
tions were so degrading to the country he repre¬ 
sented, and so humiliating to himself and family, 
that they had become intolerable. Jefferson, be¬ 
ing antagonistic to Hamilton, who was friendly to 
the English, did not care for the British view¬ 
point and was not in sympathy with anything that 
emanated from Britain or a British subject. Al¬ 
though Jefferson was very French in his sympa¬ 
thies, yet his friend, the French Minister, wrote to 
Talleyrand protestingly saying that “All Wash¬ 
ington was turned upside down.” Jefferson’s 
equality plan, however, was killed, not by foreign 
ambassadors, but because our own citizens treated 
it with ridicule and disdain. A change and a little 
novelty were amusing and not unwelcome, but 
when it became imbedded as a habit and a fixed 


78 


SOCIALISM 


principle, they did not like it. The theories which 
Jefferson tried to force on a people and their for¬ 
eign guests recall, somewhat, the recent sensational 
and so-called democratic utterances and practices 
of a Secretary of State. Such an attitude is not 
democratic, but the egoism of ignorance. 

America, the land of equality and freedom, has 
seen many communistic experiments. These have 
been classified by Hillquit as: 

1. Sectarian, 

2. Owenite, 

3. Fourieristic, 

4. Icarian. 

The “Sectarian” class is represented by the old 
“Shakers,” whose first settlement was established 
at Watervliet in 1776. The Harmony Society 
or Rappist Community was introduced into Penn¬ 
sylvania from Germany in 1804. Eleven years 
later they moved West to New Harmony, Indiana, 
and were bought out by the Owenites in 1825, re¬ 
turning to Pennsylvania and founding the village 
of Economy. Emigrants from Germany also 
founded the Community of Zoar in Ohio, in 1817, 
and the Amana or True Inspirational Society in 
1842. Between 1844 and 1856, Sister Commu¬ 
nities were established in Bethel, Missouri, and 
Aurora, Oregon; both were dissolved about 1880, 
and the Zoar Community kept up a lingering exist¬ 
ence until 1898. A Colony was founded at 
Oneida in 1848 by Noyes, as a settlement for the 
Society of Perfectionists. It was maintained that 
“no intrinsic difference exists between property in 


SOCIALISM 


79 


person and property in things; and that the same 
spirit which abolishes exclusiveness in regard to 
money would abolish, if circumstances allowed full 
scope to it, exclusiveness in regard to women and 
children.” 

This outrageous creed calls to mind the story of 
John Graham Brooks: “I knew an apostle of un¬ 
flinching equality, a French egalitaire, who was 
dedicated absolutely to his principles. The coat on 
his back, his writing desk and books, the wife 
with whom he lived, belonged, he claimed, as 
strictly to another as to himself. ‘The principle,’ 
this man said, ‘loses its greatness and its power 
over men if it is not harmonious and complete.’ 
The so-called scientific socialist roused his wrath 
‘because they pick and choose,’ he said, ‘like the 
stupid Bourgeois, this or that fragment of equality, 
according to their taste.’ ” 

Sectarian or so-called Religious Communities 
have always existed for much longer periods of 
time than attempts at communism founded on 
political and economic reform. If we review the 
spectacle of Dowie of Zion City dominating his 
semi-hysterical following with threats of hell and 
proffers of heaven, and if we consider how many 
inmates of Sectarian Communities are practically 
robbed of their individual property and held under 
control by the power of suggestion and an arti¬ 
ficially created sense of duty and soul purification, 
we can understand why such communities have ex¬ 
isted for fairly long periods of time, whereas every 
other type of Colony exploiting equality and the 
elimination of private property as a cold-blooded 


80 SOCIALISM 

economic reform, has been doomed to speedy 
failure. 

The Owenite class of Settlements in this country 
was heralded forth with a blare of trumpets. 
Owen had the rare privilege of speaking two even¬ 
ings in the Hall of Representatives in Washington. 
In 1826, with his American converts, he purchased 
New Harmony, Indiana, in the valley of the 
Wabash, paying $150,000 for the Mill, houses, and 
thirty thousand acres of land. As soon as Owen 
commenced to enforce his theory of equal life, 
trouble and mutiny followed. The women claimed 
the boon of free and persistent speech; they posi¬ 
tively objected to equality of dress and would not 
tolerate the style selected by the Managers. Even 
the most desirable men protested and the Com¬ 
munists organized a strike,—a splendid inaugural 
for a Utopia of Equality! Owen, who loved to be 
called “Our Dear Social Father,” was in reality 
a benevolent feudal lord over his Communities. 
Psychologically, he knew nothing of the working 
classes; he was an autocratic philanthropist with 
democratic creed and intentions. His way was the 
only way, his views did not admit of argument, 
and it never occurred to him that the poor people 
could think and act for themselves in their own 
way. Owen wrote of his people: “They are 
slaves of my mercy,” but he soon discovered that 
in America, under the sky of freedom, whereas 
human nature may be somewhat plastic, it refuses 
to lose its personality and become shaped to the 
desires and dictates of Owen or any other man, no 
matter how worthy he may be. Owen’s assertions 


SOCIALISM 


81 


that New Harmony was to become a wonderful 
centre of learning interested Abraham Lincoln as 
a boy, and great was Lincoln’s disappointment 
when his father refused him permission to go. 
Owen organized Socialistic Communities near Cin¬ 
cinnati and in other parts of Ohio, in Tennessee 
and New York State, but all had short existences 
and from the first were doomed to failure. 

Albert Brisbane, a disciple of Fourier, was re¬ 
sponsible for the introduction of Fourierist Com¬ 
munism into this country. The North American 
Phalanx was established in New Jersey in 1848. 
Many more were organized and whereas only two 
Phalanges were attempted in France, about forty 
were started in the United States. They all, how¬ 
ever, soon became insolvent Utopias, for “human 
nature will not submit to have thrust upon it the 
externals of a literal equality.” 

The last class of Colonies exploiting Commun¬ 
ism were the Icarians, established in harmony with 
the teachings of Etienne Cabet of France. Acting 
under the advice of Owen, fifteen hundred of his 
followers journeyed to Texas in 1848, but disap¬ 
pointments and failures followed them and in a 
year one thousand had deserted the Colony. The 
remainder split up into parties, forming new com¬ 
munities, but ultimately all the branches were 
dissolved. 

The Jeffersonian clause in our Declaration of In¬ 
dependence that “All men are created equal,” has 
at times given the greatest minds of this country 
much concern. Lincoln was goaded by statesmen, 
politicians and petty demagogues in his day and 


82 


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had to admit that there was inequality between the 
negro and the white man; but that underlying all, 
there is a basis of equality, positive and impreg¬ 
nable. “There is,” said he, “no reason in the world 
why the negro is not entitled to all the natural 
rights enumerated in the Declaration of Indepen¬ 
dence: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled 
to these as the White Man. I agree with Judge 
Douglas that he is not my equal in many respects 
—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or 
intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the 
bread, without the leave of anyone else, which his 
own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of 
Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living 
man.” And again in response to unfair questions 
of the astute, persistent Douglas, he said: “Any¬ 
thing that argues me into his idea of perfect social 
and political equality with the negro is but a 
specious and fantastic arrangement of words by 
which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a 
chestnut-horse.” 

If we consider mental resourcefulness and the 
development of the brain by usage, then the Cau¬ 
casian race excels every other race which has not 
been subjected to similar conditions, for the White 
Man has had to work in cold, damp climates and 
either dominate his environment or succumb to its 
inexorable laws tending toward extermination. 

The White Man claims not equality, but superi¬ 
ority, to all other races, but in regard to time, 
ethnology suggests that primitive man was black 
or dark brown, certainly not white. If we consider 


SOCIALISM 


83 


ancestry and pedigree as a great factor in social 
life, then the Caucasians have not the aristocratic, 
pure lineage of the dark-skinned races. The 
Mongolian looks with tolerance upon the Whites, 
whom he ranks on a lower plane than himself; the 
Indian aristocrats of the high castes admit equality 
only with Caucasian Royalty, but claim great su¬ 
periority to ordinary white men. The original 
Red Indians never felt inferior to the Caucasians, 
but they painted their devils white, and apparently 
with good reason. We often see members of the 
Negro Race, here in the North, ignorant and intol¬ 
erant, filling the role of public servants and en¬ 
deavoring to impress their self-importance on the 
Caucasians whom they patronizingly serve. The 
most condescending arrogance I ever saw was ex¬ 
pressed by a Negro Pullman waiter to a cultured 
Chinese official, an Oriental aristocrat, who was 
travelling with his retinue of assistants and serv¬ 
ants; toward the white men this pompous negro 
displayed superior indifference, but to the Chinese 
gentleman he assumed the role of a god. 

Socialists may say that their creed of absolute 
social equality does not refer to all races of men, 
but what about the Owen and Fourier interna¬ 
tional schemes of Federated Communists? If the 
socialism of unqualified equality was real sub¬ 
stance instead of an impossible, vaporous theory, 
then communists of mixed races, as well as of 
varied assortments of temperaments and capabili¬ 
ties, would be in order, for socialism in any form 
is but a positive revolt against any kind of in¬ 
equality. 


84 


SOCIALISM 


At the core of every socialistic aspiration is some 
conception of equality; in the heart and brain of 
every real individual is some protest against equal¬ 
ity. Nature abhors uniformity and loves variety. 
As the world advances the greater become the ex¬ 
tent and quality of variability. Huber tells us that 
he was able to distinguish the individual ants on 
the hill, each being different from its fellows. The 
uniformity of today is the variation of tomorrow; 
and man, the highest of all creations, is the most 
complex of all. Communists have discovered by 
bitter and expensive experience that mankind has 
great diversity, inequality of talents and tenden¬ 
cies, and we know that such differences deepen and 
broaden with progress and development. It is 
human nature “to shrink from monotony and re¬ 
joice in variation—a world in which none are bet¬ 
ter, braver, more gracious, more eloquent, or more 
masterful than others, presents a sorry spectacle 
to the imagination.” If beauty became common 
it would be monotonous and there would be no 
beauty; if property was eliminated there would be 
no gifts; if surroundings were standardized there 
would be no inspiration and no poets; if men were 
all equal, we would all want to be farmers or 
loafers, carpenters or managers, and a community 
or colony would sink into oblivion with equal im¬ 
petus, whether all were loafers or all managers. 

Closely following the passion for wealth and an 
inequality of property is the wild search for gene¬ 
alogical evidence or bogus fabrications of ancestry, 
whose remoteness in the archives of the past in¬ 
evitably tends toward the creation of an aura of 


SOCIALISM 


85 


distinguished aristocracy; and so we have the mod¬ 
ern mania for inequality in fortuitous birth. Even 
William Shakespeare’s brilliant mind, with all its 
wonderful comprehension of human bigness and 
smallness, could not overcome his petty social aspi¬ 
rations. He strove to forget his humble birth, his 
wife at the tubs, and mingled with the Royalty 
and aristocracy of his day. Although compara¬ 
tively poor, he became a “Social Pusher,” and even 
bought for himself a bogus Coat of Arms. 

Genealogical societies, professional genealogists 
—reputable enthusiasts and discreditable fakers— 
daughters and sons of this, that and the other, are 
all worshippers at the shrine of Heraldry, and tor¬ 
mentors of our Librarians. Brooks tells us of a 
Colonial dame, flushed with delight because on a 
great occasion in another city, her badge had given 
her showy precedence over certain Daughters of 
the Revolution who, at home, never failed to let 
her feel her social inferiority. She cried: “In all 
my life, no minute ever gave me a joy like that.” 
And this is the malleable human nature that 
socialists would mold into common, equal shapes! 
Organizations of men, strutting like peacocks, with 
“grand,” “sublime,” “supreme” and “illustrious” 
titles, show that pleasure of apparent superiority 
is not confined to the female sex; the original 
inhabitants of this country or the aristocracy of 
African jungles and races beyond the archives of 
tradition never searched for feathers more assidu¬ 
ously than modern man, who socialists believe can be 
levelled to one plane of absolute, unswerving equal¬ 
ity. The education of the typical American soci- 


86 


SOCIALISM 


ety girl is planned with the sole idea of her mak¬ 
ing a good impression, rather than fitting her for 
life as a useful member of society; and the boy in 
school and college is urged by his ambitious bour¬ 
geois parents to cultivate the proper social con¬ 
nections. This land of democracy is a social trav¬ 
esty of equality and fraternity with a snobbishness 
of nothingness playing the leading burlesque role. 
With what thrills of joy the proud mother reports 
the presentation of her daughter to British Roy¬ 
alty, or the equally socially ambitious man of 
affairs tells his friend of the German Kaiser’s visit 
to his yacht during his last trip abroad. Inequal¬ 
ity is certainly embedded in the minds of prosper¬ 
ous Americans, and social inequality is evidenced 
by the servants of our homes who draw the lines 
of class distinction among themselves. The shop 
girls will not mix with domestics; we have heard 
of the dances of Boston Store attendants to which 
all shop workers were invited, but the doors were 
placarded, “No servants admitted.” Governesses 
and nurses will not commingle or eat with a 
superior class of house workers, and ordinary serv¬ 
ants at times refuse to eat at a common table with 
laundresses and other domestic workers. 

With all this stratified division among the serv¬ 
ants, we see a singular indifference to the proper 
environment for small children as shown by sup¬ 
posedly respectable parents. At the best hotels 
the very young children are denied the privileges 
of the parents’ dining room, and are huddled into 
hot, stuffy quarters, near the kitchen and in com¬ 
pany with all sorts of transient chauffeurs and per- 


SOCIALISM 


87 


sonal servants. A mental and material Bedlam 
completes the picture of a communism depraving 
to the susceptible mind of a child. Not until some 
children arrive at the age of administering to the 
vanity of their ambitious parents, is their instinc¬ 
tive exclusiveness considered a virtue. These peo¬ 
ple are surely void of true culture and display 
heartless ignorance of the psychological needs of 
their children. The hotels will only continue this 
abuse of the rights of children so long as their pa¬ 
rents are indifferent to their welfare; but unfortu¬ 
nately, the average wealthy American cares only for 
social distinction, and displays immoral indifference 
to the little ones until they are ready to parade be¬ 
fore a world of lorgnettes. And what is this society 
of habitual classifiers that wealth and assumed aris¬ 
tocracy tend to make so exclusive? Surely not the 
aristocracy of intellect, genius, or of workers. 
True individualism is debarred and real workers 
disturb their equanimity. The existence of this 
society is a shameful reflection on its members; it 
has not the virtue of superiority, nor does it repre¬ 
sent true class; but it harbors people who have 
drifted into the worship of false gods. Most of 
the members are worthy of better things and should 
assert their freedom from fettering social slavery 
and rise superior to insipid drones, whose mathe¬ 
matical training has been limited to the counting 
of dollars and whose history never went beyond 
the stage of farcical genealogy. 

A generation of wholesome, successful workers 
in America is usually followed by a generation who 
ludicrously ape an aristocracy of birth, who spend 


88 


SOCIALISM 


freely only to be followed by a third generation of 
squanderers and degenerates. Work, human sym¬ 
pathy and the soul in man, alone can prevent such 
flights after false gods with the resultant degrada¬ 
tion. Inequality of man is a virtue when main¬ 
tained and honored as the Creator intended it to 
be; but inequality is limited to inherent endow¬ 
ments, capabilities, intuition, human magnetism, 
physical size and appearance, soul longings and 
peculiar expressions of the spirit and equipment 
for the duties of life. Inequalities caused by man- 
raised barriers of exclusiveness built with the false 
stones of superiority of birth, accumulation of 
money or the power of oppression exercised over 
the weaker members of the race, lead to the con¬ 
demnation by socialists of all inequalities. 


CHAPTER XI 


Inequality of Man — Nature's Repudiation of 
Socialism 

T RUE individualism teaches the psychological 
and physiological inequality of created man, 
and it condemns with ruthless scorn the 
trashy, inhuman inequalities which are the product 
of an unspiritual, debased society, false at the core 
and arrogantly ignorant of all that is truly human, 
spiritual and eternal in man. The psychological 
inequalities are so great and manifold that men 
could not be equally comfortable with equal in¬ 
comes, and the wealth of the country divided 
equally among all would make some rich and some 
poor. After such a division, many would in a short 
period of time be poorer than ever, some destitute, 
and soon would again be established the great dif¬ 
ferences between the extreme rich and the extreme 
poor. Our race develops principally by excep¬ 
tions; pronounced and great individuality ensures 
progress. True individuality glories in its in¬ 
equality, but it does not run riot; it is creative and 
co-operative and not destructive and avaricious. 
The inequality of true individualism will not lead to 
class consciousness of the masses, but to the worthy 
ambition of individuals to rise from one plane 
through work, development, and sheer merit, to a 
higher plane of human usefulness and productive¬ 
ness. 

The doctrine of strict equality ignores the in- 


90 


SOCIALISM 


equality of sex and the bi-polarity of nature. The 
sexes are positively dissimilar, and this does not 
imply the superiority of one or the other. The 
inherent characteristics and attributes of women 
are very different from those of men, yet one is the 
necessary complement of the other. Many women 
are born with masculine tendencies, and men with 
some feminine characteristics, but sex tendencies 
are quite marked and will always be so. The sexes 
are not identical, and though of equal merit, are 
unlike in traits and psychological functions, and are, 
therefore, examples of an inequality which pure 
Utopian Socialism should neither acknowledge nor 
permit. 

We acknowledge political equality with our ser¬ 
vants. We study their wants and personalities 
and endeavor in all ways to promote their highest 
interests, but for our social enjoyment and their 
own happiness they have their own quarters, their 
own meals, and are left free and unhampered, after 
their work and duties are faithfully performed, to 
follow their own individual desires in the pursuit 
of legitimate pleasure. 

Discipline, order and the laws of organization 
and co-operation are the foundations of any true 
and creative individualism. True socialism de¬ 
mands equal pay for all kinds of work, whether 
dangerous, extremely difficult, physical or mental. 
Would the weary worker staggering under a load 
all day be satisfied to see a sitting door-keeper 
enjoy equal benefits with himself? Would the 
brainy engineer, who designs and supervises the 
building of a wonderful structure, be satisfied with 


SOCIALISM 


91 


the same bed and board as is granted to the illiterate 
loafer who idles his time away each day? Could 
cooking be made of equal palatability to all, or 
will each stomach function acceptably on a com¬ 
mon diet? No common kitchen can cater to indi¬ 
viduals. The work one does, the food one eats, 
the surroundings one desires, the books one reads, 
the company one keeps, and the friends one makes, 
must all express the personality of the indi¬ 
vidual, and the development of these personal traits 
and inherent yearnings give that growth and power 
to the individuality which is suppressed and en¬ 
chained by communism. It is difficult to get to¬ 
gether a dozen congenial souls for a social dinner, 
and how can any one hope to open wide the doors 
of a community and permit all kinds of humanity 
to enter: the ascetic with the criminal, the religious 
fanatic with the materialistic atheist, the high¬ 
brow scholar with the lazy, unwashed and untruth- 
fid tramp, the virtuous, bigoted matron and the 
daughter of the streets, the intolerant Catholic and 
the prejudiced Protestant, the active worker of skill 
and ideals and the lazy, worthless parasite of in¬ 
dustry? Can one imagine such a motley assemblage 
holding any promise of equality and joy of com¬ 
panionship as anticipated by the founders of Com¬ 
munistic Life ? One who has seen much of the better 
grade of community life writes that a sweet pudding 
was enough to disturb the social equanimity of their 
Christian community and produce the sourest fer¬ 
ment of ill humor. “We all liked each other at 
first, as brother and sister should. But a very 
devil of ill will and suspicion began to show itself 


92 


SOCIALISM 


in the second month, between Brother H. and 
Brother F. It began in a way so contemptible 
that I am ashamed to tell it. Brother H. had an 
ailing stomach and could not eat a certain sweet 
pudding served once a week. Brother F.’s great 
fondness for this dish so worked upon the feelings 
of Brother H. that he could not refrain from un- 
Christian remarks to those about him.” Brooks 
says that in default of pudding Brother H. would 
have seized upon the soup, or the cut of the beard, 
manner of eating, too much or too little talking, 
gossip, jokes ill-timed, low vitality in one and 
buoyant health in another, humor here and lack of 
it there, romantic fervor in this member and in 
another only grey matter of fact. We all know 
how the passengers, and even the crew, on a ship 
grow weary of constant companionship during a 
long voyage, detest the common table, and with the 
Captain yearn for a change of social environment. 
The common tables at hotels have now generally 
vanished, and before them, rooms with several beds, 
giving rest at night to friends or strangers. The 
American plan with its table d’hote is being re¬ 
placed by the European a la carte service, when¬ 
ever the diner can afford the charge, just as the 
separate dishes have replaced the old common dish 
of the Middle Ages. 

Men and women destitute of poise or virility 
may enter a community based on some distorted 
precept of religion; they may for years live tract¬ 
able, passive lives and function automatically on 
lines of non-resistance. Real men and women with 
character and personalities—true individuals— 


SOCIALISM 


93 


refuse to have their bodies and souls so imprisoned. 
Bellamy in his “Looking Backward” could not get 
his people to inhabit his imaginative Utopia until 
he had numbed their faculties by the influence of 
a great, all-pervading religious revival which car¬ 
ried them off their feet in a frenzy of fanatical 
determination to enter the Promised Land. Many 
communists have been charmed with the pictured 
beauties of Utopian equality before they tried it; 
but after a period of experiment, the principle of 
Utopianism is to them a repugnant, inhuman vice, 
and their life, during the trial, like a bad dream. 

One of the last fictitious journeys to an ideal¬ 
ized socialistic country is told by Parry in “The 
Scarlet Empire.” His imaginary land is a demo¬ 
cratic Atlantis where the majority rule and the 
individual must implicitly obey. The law is based 
on the fundamental idea of universal equality; 
persons are numbered, not named; speech is lim¬ 
ited; to decline to take medicine from the State 
physician is rebellion; all dress alike and eat the 
same food and all arise by bell and retire by bell 
at the same hour each day. Praying is required 
by law and the period specified; the State arranges 
all marriages, each for a period of three years; the 
fair marrying the ugly, and the large the small, in 
order to produce equality of offspring. Referring 
to inventions and progress, Parry says that with 
social democracy, which was the crowning achieve¬ 
ment of the brain of man, the state of perfection 
was attained, and although the Department of 
Invention has produced no improvement of any 


94 


SOCIALISM 


kind for centuries past, this alone is ample proof 
that the limit of invention and perfection has been 
reached. Each citizen was given a card with his 
number and official duties described thereon; the 
spy and police systems flourished, there being one 
inspector to every three citizens. Industry was at 
a standstill, time was not wasted on sculpture, 
paintings or any of the fine arts; the State con¬ 
trolled and directed the acts of all the people from 
the cradle to the grave, and the government did 
all the planning and thinking for them. Capital 
was a monopoly of the Government. Large fat 
men were given the same amount of food as small 
thin men, for equality must be maintained and the 
State is justified in rectifying the errors of nature. 

Individuals with marked traits of character were 
the most dangerous delinquents in Atlantis, and 
atavism was punished by imprisonment and death; 
money was unknown and absolutely not one ves¬ 
tige of private property existed. To make men 
appear equal, every opportunity and means of 
acquiring superiority over others had been wrested 
from them and the race had degenerated to the 
level of our penitentiaries. Energy, ambition and 
ability had been stifled; sympathy, love and self- 
sacrifice were unknown and the spirit in man was 
numbed. Parry says that “Russia is a despotism 
of one man and his Bureaus, while State socialism 
is an ossified despotism of laws. In both, the in¬ 
dividual possesses no rights which the State need 
respect.” The children in Atlantis are placed in 
Public Nurseries, then into Institutions, where 


SOCIALISM 


95 


disciplinary mills grind the children into docile 
subjects of the State and every act of the child 
must conform to a fixed standard. The policy of 
the workers was: “Let us shorten hours and no 
man perform any greater share of this labor than 
he can possibly avoid.” Tasks were allotted by the 
spinning of the Wheel of Chance and the pace of 
work was set by the slowest. Parry, referring to 
the individualistic visitor to the Democracy, says: 
“You have inherited qualities of self-reliance and 
resourcefulness. In your blood is that determina¬ 
tion that will conquer obstacles, and you possess 
confidence in the dictates of your own judgment 
and the power of your own right arm. Genera¬ 
tions of men molded in the storm and stress of 
individual freedom, have bequeathed to you 
strength of character not to be found by any other 
means.” Speaking of the citizens of the Social 
Democracy of Atlantis, he says: “Miserable 
wretches, with souls withered into nothingness, 
moving like automata through their aimless, bar¬ 
ren lives, slaves to their laws! Was there ever be¬ 
fore in all the universe a country where man-made 
laws had embalmed in mummydom an entire 
race?” Social democracy, infatuated with equal¬ 
ity, took every vestige of independence from the 
individuals and the result was social petrifaction. 
Utopian socialism is now very seldom advocated 
as such, the “dream excursions” of unbalanced 
socialists are generally considered impractical as 
presented, but hundreds of thousands of socialists 
continue to believe implicitly in much that we have 


96 


SOCIALISM 


herein discussed, although generally conceded to 
be impossible, untrue to life, and opposed to the 
spirit of progress and the highest interest, happi¬ 
ness and development of the individual and man¬ 
kind. The old Utopian and the true communistic 
socialism upon which modern socialism rests, has 
been repudiated since the middle of the Nineteenth 
Century by the so-called Scientific School of Marx; 
but socialism with all its variety of branches, 
springs from the same trunk. Communists with 
their fanaticism and lack of knowledge of human 
nature, were in the main far more humane and 
charitable than the leaders of later day schools. 
The old Utopian leaders were generally lovable 
though misguided fellows, and their lives void of 
all anarchy or thought of violent revolution, are 
in many respects lives of self-renunciation, unselfish 
charity and sincere, earnest purpose. The aristo¬ 
cratic Saint-Simon, dying penniless and friendless, 
with shining face, uttered his last words: “The 
future is ours.” Fourier said: “My heart breaks, 
for the world has refused to hear me.” Owen’s 
life was more turbid, sinking from exalted heights 
of hopefulness and assured success to deep despair. 
His last words to man were of joy that “relief 
has come.” 

“Their visions will not come to naught, 

Who saw by lightning in the dark, 

The deeds they dreamed will well be wrought 
By those who work in clearer light.” 


CHAPTER XII 


Socialists and Socialism 

T HE period of transition from Utopian So¬ 
cialism to what has been termed, for many 
decades, “Scientific Socialism,” is generally 
permeated with the thought and works of Cabet 
and Blanc of France and Weitling of Germany. 
The basis of this intermediate phase of socialism 
was not the brotherhood, justice and organized 
equality of the earlier imaginative Utopians, but 
rather a crude class doctrine, with an appeal to the 
laborer, as one suffering from injustice and oppres¬ 
sion. Cabet, the author of a philosophical and 
social romance entitled “The Voyage to Icaria,” 
wrote an imaginative story of a far away wonder¬ 
land, an Elysium, a new terrestrial Paradise, where 
a communistic government prevailed and all en¬ 
joyed the full benefits of equality and co-operation. 
His appeal was to the working classes of France; 
and it is said that several hundred thousand joined 
his organized movement. But when the call came 
to journey to Texas and enter the Eden of the 
West, only fifteen hundred made the venture and 
their dream of a heavenly Utopia was soon dis¬ 
pelled. Cabet’s life was spent in political intrigue 
and exile; he was alternately engaged in the at¬ 
tempt to organize Working Men’s Communisms, 
and in defending himself in the Courts from the 

97 


SOCIALISM 


attacks of his disappointed and disillusioned fol¬ 
lowers. He spent his last days in America, not 
in Texas, but in Illinois, with a small band of “The 
Faithful,” and he died in St. Louis in 1856, having 
entirely abandoned his community life. 

Wilhelm Weitling was a man of the people, born 
in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1808. He was a tailor 
by trade, but travelled extensively and gained 
knowledge of communism by reading a Fourier- 
istic paper, and ultimately became an enthusiastic 
socialist, writing some books of real merit. Hillquit 
says: “In his Social Philosophy, Weitling may be 
said to be the connecting link between primitive 
and modern socialism. In the main he is still a 
Utopian and his writings betray the unmistakable 
influences of the early French socialists. Misery 
and poverty are to him but the result of human 
malice, and his cry is for eternal justice and for 
absolute liberty and equality for all mankind.” 
His plan was to organize an attractive industry 
with three prime divisions of labor,—necessary, 
useful and attractive. He urged the working 
classes to form an Independent Labor Party; he 
dwelt upon the oppression and exploitation of the 
poor by the rich and his fantastical dreamland of the 
future was to be ruled, not by Kings or Presidents, 
but by a commission of the three greatest scientists 
of the world, supported by other similar committees 
of specialized experts. Weitling was exiled and 
came to America for a year, in 1846. He returned 
to Germany to participate in the Revolution of 
1848, and after its failure he came back to this 


SOCIALISM 


99 


country to conduct a futile but tireless propaganda, 
until he died in Brooklyn in 1871. 

Louis Blanc was born in Madrid, of French 
parents, in 1811 . He lived in poverty in Paris, 
studying law, and later, writing. His first famous 
essay, published in 1839 , attributes all the evils that 
afflict mankind to the pressure of competition, 
whereby the weaker are driven to the wall. He 
urged, at first, variable wages for work, according 
to its value and importance, but later became a 
staunch advocate of the equalization of wage, main¬ 
taining that “Genius should assert its legitimate 
empire, not by the amount of tribute which it will 
levy on society, but by the greatness of the service 
which it will render.” He writes of the joy of dis¬ 
covering knowledge, and affirms that exceptional 
endowments will always find development and a 
fitting reward in the exceptional service that they 
render to society. Blanc was an advocate of “So¬ 
cial Workshops”—a sort of combined, co-opera¬ 
tive society and trade-unions, where the workmen 
in each trade were expected to unite their efforts 
for the common good. He became a member of 
the Provisional Government of 1848 and urged 
the Government to undertake the “guarantee of 
the existence of the workmen by work.” He 
pleaded, unsuccessfully, for the formation of a 
Ministry of Labor, but only succeeded in being 
appointed on a Political Labor Commission that 
sat at Luxemburg. Blanc was caught between the 
relentless grindstones of parties, all more or less 
antagonistic to him, and he fled to Britain with 


100 


SOCIALISM 


false passports after being shamefully maltreated. 
Blanc was a picturesque figure, a splendid orator, 
but a writer of politics rather than philosophy or 
economics. His experiment with National Work¬ 
shops showed some promise, but ended a disastrous 
failure because of his political opponents, who 
craftily filled the shops with mob labor \yhom they 
intended to use for revolutionary purposes. He 
opposed, as early as 1839 , the idea of Napoleonic 
restoration, predicting that it would be “despotism 
without glory—an empire without an emperor.” 
He spent his last years in Paris, and died in 1882 , 
after urging the abolition of the Presidency and 
the Senate of France. Louis Blanc was not a 
strong, fearless leader; he lacked in personal force 
and endurance, but he greatly influenced the social¬ 
ism of the period. He saw most clearly that social 
reform as an end, could not be attained in his day 
with political reform as a means to that end. He 
urged a democratic government and the emancipa¬ 
tion of the proletariat. The working classes 
should obtain, through government, the instru¬ 
ments of labor. If Blanc had to define what the 
State should be, he would reply: “The State is the 
banker of the poor.” Blanc had to learn the les¬ 
son that the proletariat of the country districts 
were not in accord with the proletariat of towns 
and cities and that all were opposed to the work¬ 
ing classes of Paris. Classes existed within classes. 
Blanc did not agitate revolution; he always avoided 
direct connection with it. He was a genial, 
amiable fellow, lacking in a certain sort of cour- 


SOCIALISM 101 

age and leadership, but always true to his prin¬ 
ciples. 

Karl Johann Rodbertus, a German socialist, born 
in 1805, is considered by many to be the founder 
of Scientific Socialism. Rodbertus was a prosper¬ 
ous Prussian lawyer, a cultured and unobtrusive 
student who detested violence and agitation. He 
believed that society was gradually developing 
from a crude to a complete, attractive and whole¬ 
some state, and in this thought he expressed the 
law of evolution, maintaining, like a true Hegelian, 
that there are three prime stages in the economic 
progress of mankind: 1. Heathen period with 
property of human beings; 2. Period of private 
property in land and capital; 3. Period not yet 
reached with property dependent on service. He 
estimated that it would take five hundred years 
to reach this period of complete perfection. Rod¬ 
bertus did not repudiate the Monarchic institu¬ 
tions of his country, and, whereas, he looked favor¬ 
ably upon social democracy, nevertheless he hoped 
that a German Emperor could be fitted to accept¬ 
ably perform the functions of a Social Emperor. 
He maintained with Adam Smith and Ricardo, 
that labor is the source and measure of value. He 
objected to the Iron Law of Wages, but would 
safeguard the interests of all existing capitalists 
and landlords, maintaining that with proper laws, 
the workers could reap more and more the bene¬ 
fits of an increasing production and a rapidly 
gaining international wealth. He advocated that 
wages should be paid according to ability; and de- 


102 


SOCIALISM 


sired that competition should be maintained, but 
supervised and controlled. The state should man¬ 
age production and distribution and ultimately uni¬ 
versal socialism would be realized. 

It is enteresting to note that socialism is not a 
fixed and clearly defined social creed. There is 
indeed no such thing as understandable socialism, 
for practically every leading socialist has a theory 
of his own looking toward the reconstruction of 
society. Socialism covers a field large enough to 
include, in some form or other, every social virtue 
and every social vice. One can draw a fairly accu¬ 
rate mental picture of true democracy, a limited 
Monarchy or a despotic autocracy revealing to us 
definite pictures of social existence under such 
forms of government. Even the Prohibition 
Movement gives us one fixed point to work on, but 
the Socialistic Movement gives us none. What is 
preached today is condemned tomorrow, and what 
Jones says is pure socialism, Smith, with ridicule, 
denies. Socialism is, therefore, in its true essence, 
but a protest against existing society, and although 
we do not feel honored with the much abused 
name, all true individualists and evolutionists are 
as truly socialists as the street corner orators or 
those learned individuals who write profusely and 
scientifically upon social conditions and imagine 
they belong to a revolutionary proletarian cult, 
named Socialism. 

Socialism was a word coined by the advocates 
of Brotherly Love and Justice. It was intended 
to signify faith in the comradeship of man as the 


SOCIALISM 


103 


basis of social existence; the expression of a great 
ideal, of man’s loftiest and noblest aspirations; of 
harmony between men individually and collec¬ 
tively, and of that brotherhood which would elim¬ 
inate all strife, discord, suffering and injustice. 
Such was Socialism intended to be; but it is now 
any theory or system of social reconstruction which 
requires a more equitable distribution of property 
and the fruits of labor. It may mean a form of 
the revolutionary spirit with a suggestion of an¬ 
archy and dynamite, and it is often used to describe 
any lawless, revolutionary scheme, as well as any 
revolt or political propaganda against inequality. 
Von Scheel has defined it as “the economic phi¬ 
losophy of the suffering classes”—the protest of 
the under-dog. It covers all schemes urged upon 
society to interfere with property, the idea being 
that such acts will be for the benefit of the poor. 
It includes the limitation of so-called individual¬ 
ism, popularly known as Laissez-Faire or let- 
alone-ism, in favor of the unfortunate or suffering 
classes, and it seeks to eliminate by pronounced 
acts or measures, the existent system of private 
property and free competition. 

One advocate of a peculiar branch of socialism 
has said that socialism is not anarchy but order; 
that it is not communism but justice. Socialism 
of today generally discredits communism, whether 
it be of the old, new, idealistic, religious or eco¬ 
nomic type; therefore, socialism of the present 
looks with scorn upon the socialism of the past, 
and it is very probable that the socialism of the 


104 SOCIALISM 

future will be equally intolerant of the socialism 
of today. 

When Marx and Engels wrote their Manifesto 
for an International Congress of working men, in 
1848, they maintained that socialism was a deca¬ 
dent middle class movement and that the com¬ 
munism of Cabet and Weitling was a working 
class movement. Engels wrote: “As our own 
notion from the very beginning was that the eman¬ 
cipation of the working class must be the act of the 
working class itself, there could be no doubt as 
to which of the two names we must take.” Thus 
appeared the great and complete theoretical party 
program of the Proletariat under the name, “Mani¬ 
festo of the Communist Party”; and ever since, 
the words communist and socialist have been at 
war. Marx condemned the socialists who were 
said to be communists, and the communists of 
Marx and his party, we are urged to regard as 
socialists and not communists—a mere transfer¬ 
ence of names. 

Whatever we may call the social schemes of the 
past, it is nevertheless a fact that the modern 
phases of socialism were heralded forth conspicu¬ 
ously by Marx and Engels, who were the first to 
weld together the teachings of several of their 
predecessors into a real declaration and platform 
of what is now called by its advocates “Scientific 
Socialism.” The Manifesto says that Communism 
(Socialism) is already acknowledged by all Euro¬ 
pean Powers to be itself a power and that it is 
high time that Communists (Socialists) should 


SOCIALISM 


105 


openly, in the face of the whole world, publish 
their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet 
this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism 
(Socialism) with a Manifesto of the party itself. 
Marx, who dominated his collaborator, Engels, 
was an autocratic leader who ruled his environment 
and followers with a prejudice, arrogance and 
power, at times very similar to that of the despot¬ 
ism which he despised in other rulers. Marx 
placed socialism firmly as a class struggle, taking 
his thought from the peaceful utterances of his 
socialistic predecessors; but he added passion, 
hatred, and threats to the movement. His Mani¬ 
festo reads: “The history of all hitherto existing 
society is the history of class struggles. Freeman 
and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, 
guild-master and journeyman, in a word oppressor 
and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to 
one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now 
hidden, now open, fight, a fight that each time 
ended either in a revolutionary re-constitution of 
society at large, or in the common ruin of the con¬ 
tending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, 
we find almost everywhere a complicated arrange¬ 
ment of society into various orders, a manifold 
graduation of social rank. In ancient Rome we 
have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the 
Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, 
journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of 
these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The 
modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from 
the ruins of feudal society, has not done away with 


106 


SOCIALISM 


class antagonism. It has but established new 
classes, new conditions of oppression and new 
forms of struggles in place of the old ones. Our 
epoch, the epoch of the Bourgeois, possesses, how¬ 
ever, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the 
class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and 
more splitting up into two hostile camps, into two 
great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeois 
and Proletariat.” 

After expressing his views and presenting his 
demands, Marx continues: “In short, the Com¬ 
munists (Socialists) everywhere support every 
revolutionary movement against the existing social 
and political order of things,” and! he con¬ 
cludes his famous Manifesto with this battle cry 
of the Proletaire: “The Communists (Socialists) 
disdain to conceal their views and aims. They 
openly declare that their ends can be attained 
only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social 
conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a 
Communistic (Socialistic) revolution. The prole¬ 
tariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They 
have a world to win. Working men of all coun¬ 
tries, unite!” 

And what has all this bombastic harangue, this 
bitter and venomous denunciation of society, 
amounted to? Is it the living creed of the socialist 
today? Only to a limited extent, and it is daily 
becoming less potent. Does it express the belief 
of the working man of today? Positively not, for 
Marxism is discredited by the greatest Labor Par¬ 
ties and Unions in existence. 


SOCIALISM 


107 


Marx was exiled from his country; he bitterly 
denounced all his “comrades in socialism” who ex¬ 
pressed views different from his own. Although 
born a Jew, with his family he renounced the faith 
in early life, in order that as Christians their lives 
would have brighter prospects for material success 
void of race prejudices. Marx was a cold, uncom¬ 
promising “Intellectual.” His leadership was that 
of a scholarly, relentless, mailed fist—a spear that 
knew no brother. He died in London in 1883, a 
man without a country and with no friends among 
his mental equals, and with but a few acknowl¬ 
edged followers, although his name for a few 
decades was probably the greatest in the history of 
Socialism, and stands today for evolutionary and 
revolutionary socialism, based on a materialistic 
conception of the world and of human history. It 
seems rather incongruous that Marx, an acknowl¬ 
edged and admittedly great leader of Socialism, 
should be himself a pronounced Individualist, void 
of the true spirit of life. Marx never made any 
concession to the desires of others. He boasted 
that he never compromised. He trod his path in 
life alone; public opinion did not interest him. He 
seemed void of sentiment and had a tendency to 
welcome opposition so that he could have the satis¬ 
faction of crushing it. 

There are many societarians in life who prefer 
the socialism of brotherly love and kindliness of 
heart to the Marx socialism of class hatred and 
mechanistic, unloving and unlovable life. There is 
more true socialism in the individualism of altru- 


108 


SOCIALISM 


istic humanity today than in the hideous, egoistic, 
so-called socialism of Marx, who preached a doc¬ 
trine void of the spirit of love and true socialism 
and lived a life of arrogant, materialistic despot¬ 
ism. In his attitude and assumed power, Marx 
showed that very tyranny which had caused those 
social diseases, his surgical knife of revolution was 
heralded to cure, but if operating upon the Body 
Social, would have caused endless suffering, an¬ 
archy and useless violence. Evolution, the law of 
the universe, the law of creation and of perfection, 
will cure all social ills, and not the materialistic 
egoism of professed socialism as represented by 
Marx. The present has been born of the past, and 
by the sure working law of progressive evolution 
and ever advancing ideals, it will be “the parent of 
the future.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


Social and Industrial Evolution 

S OCIAL evolution is the law of gradual but 
definite development, from man’s weaknesses, 
incompleteness and imperfections toward 
God’ s complete perfection. Spencer recognized the 
application of the law of evolution to all phases of 
human life, although he wofully failed to perceive 
and acknowledge the power which made law pos¬ 
sible. There is the evolution of the physical body, 
of the mind and of society. Spencer says that by 
evolution we pass “from an indefinite, incoherent 
homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity.” 
If we analyze society we find it to consist of an 
amazingly large number of groups of specialized 
interests with peculiar individualities dominating 
the groups. Such a condition dem'ands that mutual 
confidence exists between groups or individuals, for 
specialization undoubtedly necessitates interdepend¬ 
ence. And so today society is approaching the 
finished product of evolution described by Spencer 
as “coherent heterogeneity.” 

This social condition is not obtained through the 
medium of much agitated socialism, but by sociali¬ 
zation with true individualism. Evolution demands 
a changing condition until perfection is reached. 
The human race is undoubtedly a long way from 
perfection and we can unhesitatingly assert that 
the social condition of life prevailing today will not 

109 


110 


SOCIALISM 


obtain but will become overwhelmingly improved 
in some epoch of the future. As the world is in a 
very variable state of development, each race, 
nation or class must experience its own peculiar 
progression. Evolution, therefore, protests against 
that absolutism which advocates a uniform policy 
for all peoples, and against perpetualism which 
teaches that the same condition will apply for all 
time. 

The evolution of society has resulted in a gradual 
differentiation of the constituents of society and a 
gradual interconnection of such withdrawing units. 
It has been said that separation and apartness in¬ 
crease with every step of social growth, but this is 
only partly true. Evolution and the progress of 
civilization drive men apart as individuals and weld 
their work into one great chain of achievement. A 
large number of men may be seated in a hall ex¬ 
pressing their views on a local matter. These men 
may later be scattered in all parts of a vast land. 
Here we have an illustration of prime communism 
changed to extreme individualism. Suppose now 
a huge and persistently automatic switchboard were 
placed in the hall and each man connected to it and 
to each of his fellows by wires which carry the full 
expression of each individuality to each colleague; 
is not this expressive of a broadening life of useful¬ 
ness, not through socialism but through the sociali¬ 
zation of true expansive and effective individual¬ 
ism? Herbert Spencer was duped by socialism and 
just before his death he wrote in horror that “So¬ 
cialism will triumph inevitably in spite of all op- 


SOCIALISM 


111 


position and its establishment will be the greatest 
disaster which the world has ever known.” He 
added, in his gloom of despondency and pessimism: 
“Sooner or later it will be brought to an end by 
military despotism.” We have been told that 
socialists, the world over, were overjoyed at this 
admission from their arch enemy. Spencer’s men¬ 
tality was wonderful, but his spiritual eye-sight was 
wofully bad. The socialism that was a nightmare 
to Spencer was but a creation of his own mind; a 
pure fiction of his imagination. 

As time advances, such an era of social retro¬ 
gression becomes more remote. Military despotism 
is now on trial and the great European War will 
most probably do much to rob militarism of its 
fangs and despotisms of their power. The worst 
dream of the violent social revolutionist is an in¬ 
nocent diversion as compared with the barbaric 
horrors and senselessness of war, promulgated by 
a few and made the curse of the many. It has been 
said that the Marx and Engels theory of social evo¬ 
lution, called by its adherents “Scientific Socialism” 
is based on the theory that in every historical period 
the social, intellectual and political life is deter¬ 
mined by the prevailing economic conditions and 
that in the future, the economic conditions will be 
such as to necessitate inevitably a socialistic organi¬ 
zation of society. But where is the argument here 
for revolutionary socialism and the elimination of 
private property? Why should such an hypothesis 
array the poorer factions of the laboring class 
against all other classes of their fellows? If the 


112 


SOCIALISM 


poorest of all men have been raised from chattel 
slavery to serfdom, thence to villeins and later to 
free-men, and are now all free-men advancing with 
political freedom and equality to still higher and 
higher planes of usefulness and power, do not these 
historical facts prove an acceptable working of the 
law of evolution? Marx's theory of social evolution 
is simply a nail driven by bigoted Teutonism on 
which to hang a coat of revolution and around which 
to rally a mob of law-transgressing malcontents. 
Evolution is the expression of the law of universal 
growth and development; it is the expression of 
the Cosmic Spirit of life; rob it of its soul as Marx 
and other socialists have done and nothing is left 
but a jellied, unspiritual mass which you may call 
what you please and mold to your heart’s content; 
for it is robbed of all virtue and is no longer a law. 

Some socialists maintain that as capitalism dis¬ 
placed feudalism, and feudalism succeeded slavery, 
so will socialism take the place of capitalism which 
is supposed to be the dominant power of today. 
But capitalism has really existed from the days 
when men first made a positive leap toward prog¬ 
ress. In the days of primitive communism, the 
best weapons, fetishes and knick-knacks of value to 
the individual became private property, had negoti¬ 
able value and were therefore the forerunners of 
capital. The communistic wars brought captives 
that had at first a value as food, then a more eco¬ 
nomic value as slaves. If a slave was put to work, 
his surplus product enriched the tribe and his labors 
relieved members of the tribe of certain duties and 


SOCIALISM 


113 


permitted an extended scope for their inherent 
energies. Leaders, chiefs and kings of the early 
communistic tribes enjoyed peculiar benefits from 
the accumulating wealth; and the tribal distribu¬ 
tion of its wealth was not unknown. Aristotle said 
that only by the invention of machines would the 
abolition of slavery be made possible, and in ancient 
Greece there existed a semi-communism of a 
high caste, with culture, art and a love of phi¬ 
losophy resting upon a lower class of slave labor. 
The Semitic Nomads accumulated wealth in a 
negotiable form by the breeding of domesticated 
animals, and by agricultural pursuits. Tribes and 
families acquired lands and held them by the right 
of occupation. Individual ownership of land and 
a monetary system came with the further advance 
of the power and civilization of man; and thus 
private property, private ownership of land, pri¬ 
vate production and exchange, and capital with 
slave labor became the great economic factors of 
antiquity. Chattel slavery died in Roman times 
because it ceased to be profitable; the labor of free¬ 
men, because of tradition, was regarded as a degra¬ 
dation. Slaves and the free proletariat were scat¬ 
tered broadcast and there came into existence that 
feudalism which was the essential politico-economic 
system of the Middle Ages. 

The theory of feudalism has been called “The 
divine right of kings.” God owns all the earth, 
a king took as large a slice of it as he thought his 
power could hold, and proclaimed himself the 
Viceregent of God, the chosen representative of 


114 


SOCIALISM 


the Most High. The King then divided his land 
among Barons according to their strength, wealth 
and following, and this, their allotted domain, 
they had to rule over and defend; and for this 
favor from the Lord’s anointed, they paid tribute 
by military service and money. Then the Barons 
pursued the same tactics and divided the land 
among the lesser Nobles, receiving tribute in ex¬ 
change for land and protection. These Nobles 
divided the land among Freemen who paid rent; 
and the real work on the land was performed by 
the serfs, who paid for their keep and the right to 
live by rendering service directly to their imme¬ 
diate employers. Thus we have five prime classes 
composing the economic framework of feudalism 
—excluding God, who also is said to have created 
another somewhat similar scale of values and hu¬ 
man importance classified as Ecclesiastical. The 
serf maintained himself and family in an inde¬ 
pendent home; he possessed some rights, could per¬ 
form labor for himself, had really land of his own 
and was generally permitted to spend as much time 
on it as on the Freeman’s Manor land. Marx main- 
tined that from these serfs sprang the chartered 
Burghers of the earliest towns, and from these 
Burgesses the first elements of the Bourgeoisie 
were developed. 

The feudal state was a self-dependent, industrial 
whole. Free laborers were in evidence as handi¬ 
craftsmen or peasants who worked for wages wher¬ 
ever their services were required. These handi¬ 
craftsmen were specialized workers who sold or 


SOCIALISM 


115 


bartered their product. They formed themselves 
into guilds which later became their labor unions, 
masters and protectors. The guilds were strong 
enough to defy the dictates of the feudal barons 
and thus we see in the Middle Ages, the combats 
of capital and labor. 

Later came the machines and the industrial revo¬ 
lution. The workers of the guilds were inadequate 
to either work the machines or to compete with 
them. There was a persistent call for labor to feed 
the wonderful product of mechanistic art that 
would do the work of hundreds of handicraftsmen. 
“Labor and very cheap labor,” shouted the ex¬ 
ploiters. “Women, children, inmates from our 
Charity Homes can do this simple work.” The 
cities could not supply the demand; the country 
was combed for labor and the poor were enticed 
to the industrial centres. The wheels of machinery 
were making history, bringing property to their 
owners and degradation to the workers. No won¬ 
der that the Luddites of Britain rose in frenzied 
wrath to crush the relentless machines that were 
making slaves of Britain’s working classes; and it 
is not surprising that a critic of the day wrote in 
scorn: “The spectacle of England buying the 
freedom of the black slaves by riches drawn from 
the labor of her white ones, affords an interesting 
study for the cynical philosopher.” 

Marx maintains that the Bourgeoisie is the great 
and only powerful class arrayed against the prole¬ 
tariat. He states that the Bourgeoisie came into 
power by revolution and the overcoming of feu- 


116 


SOCIALISM 


dalism with its “divine right’’ Aristocracy.—“It 
has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of re¬ 
ligious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of phil¬ 
istine sentimentalism, in the icy waters of egotis¬ 
tical calculation. It has resolved personal worth 
into exchange value and in place of the numberless, 
indefeasible chartered freedom has set up a single, 
unconscionable freedom. In a word, for exploi¬ 
tation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it 
has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal ex¬ 
ploitation.” It is very evident that Marx and 
Engels had absolutely no love or hope for the 
Bourgeoisie. They desired the overthrow of Bour¬ 
geois supremacy and would abolish all private 
property. Would they advocate the destruction 
of the property of the poor, hard-working peasant 
or petty artisan, property that had been hard won, 
self-acquired and self-earned? To such a question 
they answered in the negative; yet of such stuff is 
Bourgeois property made, and in every self-owned 
abode and peasant’s hut lies the germ of the capi¬ 
talist. The condemned Bourgeoisie are the villeins 
or serfs of old and the slaves of antiquity, and the 
proletariat dares to condemn a class that has risen 
by sheer hard work and merit from slavery to 
freedom. 

The employer of labor, the makers and users of 
capital, are named Bourgeoisie, but in the great 
industrial revolution they are the dominating spirits 
that have invented machines and have overcome 
the decaying feudalism of the times with their won¬ 
derful genius and all-creative, progressive ability. 


SOCIALISM 


117 


They are not necessarily the Middle Class, con¬ 
cerned in trade, as the name implies, but rather 
the offspring from the most humble proletariat 
homes. Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the 
spinning frame, and later a capitalist, and the 
creator of the modern factory, was born in poverty, 
the youngest of thirteen children, and he grew to 
manhood without any education. J. T. Lincoln 
wrote of Arkwright: “Fate was in a jesting mood 
when she decreed that the chief actor in that re¬ 
markable social drama, the industrial revolution, 
should be a penny barber; and we wonder if the 
governing classes appreciated the irony when, 
twenty years later, in recognition of his genius, 
the barber was raised to the honor of Knighthood.” 
We wonder if the proletariat of the day were 
pleased that one of the many born in poverty with¬ 
out any admitted avenue of escape, should raise 
himself by merit to be the handler of capital and 
the ruler of men. James Hargreaves, a poor 
weaver, invented the spinning jenny; James Watt, 
a poor boy thrown on his own resources, invented 
the modern steam engine; George Stephenson, the 
father of the steam locomotive and modern railway, 
was a cowherd and could not read until he was 
well over eighteen years of age; Howe, amidst 
poverty and distress, invented the sewing machine; 
Columbus, a poor wharf-hand at Genoa, had the 
vision of a land beyond the seas; without any 
money or influence, but by his very persistency, 
he won listeners to his wild dreams, the realization 
of which ultimately did so much to change the 


118 


SOCIALISM 


social and economic conditions of the world. To 
realize his ambition, Columbus had to persistently 
overcome obstacles, and none were greater than 
the mutiny of the proletariat crew against an indi¬ 
vidual member of their own class. The founders 
of great American fortunes have been poor 
boys; great inventors of all lands have generally 
been born in very humble circumstances, and yet 
these wonderful lives of success and power, the 
expression of eternal progress and the instruments 
of universal evolution are called by socialists— 
Bourgeois, the hated exploiting class. The Prole- 
taire, who exercises his inherent forces and strives 
to subjugate nature, or the one who uses thrift 
and by economy and complete use of his endowed 
forces, earns independence or the power to employ 
others in business ventures for the good of man¬ 
kind—what are they? They are the benefactors 
and leaders of the human race. Not merely de¬ 
praved Bourgeois as designated by the farcical 
doctrine of Marx. A successful poor man who 
rises in the world is a hated Bourgeois; an unsuc¬ 
cessful poor man who remains poor because of 
small skill, or may be because of laziness or in¬ 
difference, is known as the poor, abused Prole¬ 
tariat. Abused by whom? By his successful co¬ 
workers, of course, who rise to independence. So¬ 
cialists claim no longer that the titled aristocracy, 
the favored of privilege, the decadent remains of 
“divine right” feudalism, are the oppressors of the 
Proletariat. No, they ignore such a self-evident 
useless class, but must admit that the poor boys 


SOCIALISM 


119 


who rise by sheer merit are the Bourgeoisie that 
their inane doctrine so ruthlessly condemns. 

We must not minimize the horrors of the early 
days of the Industrial Revolution. As there have 
been mad rushes for gold in our own country with 
the law on the side of him who had the best gun, 
the surest eye and the quickest hand, so in the early 
days of factory individualism, men vied with each 
other in a mad rush for profits from the capital 
invested in sheds and machines, in the acquiring 
of greater world markets, and the possession of 
gold and the power that goes with it. To obtain 
selfish, material success, they abused the bodies 
and benumbed the souls of their workers; and as 
little children could be obtained from Poor Houses 
and Asylums, they were transferred into industrial 
slavery under the false guise of apprenticeship. 
The condition of labor became so depraved, so 
loathsome that for many long years no pen could 
describe the full horror of its debasement and 
misery. Conditions have, however, gradually but 
surely improved and today industrial conditions in 
Great Britain, parts of Continental Europe and 
America are as good as they were once bad. This 
improvement has been made, not by threats, vio¬ 
lent revolution, or the preaching of socialism, but 
by reforms from within, by a broader and truer 
conception of life, and by calm vision and clear 
working conscience following the first false and 
inhuman passion for wealth at any cost. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Socialism and Class Distinction 


T HE “Scientific” Socialistic demands of 1850, 
heralded as the platform of the “Commu¬ 
nistic League,” although written by Marx 
and Engels, as individuals, are supposed to repre¬ 
sent the views of international, organized work¬ 
men. They can be briefly summarized as follows: 

1. Abolition of property in land and applica¬ 
tion of all rents of land to public purposes. 

2. A heavy, progressive, graduated income tax. 

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 

4. Confiscation of the property of all emi¬ 
grants and rebels. 

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the 
state, by means of a National Bank with State 
capital and an exclusive monopoly. 

6. Centralization of the means of communica¬ 
tion and transport in the hands of the state. 

7. Extension of factories and instruments of 
production owned by the state, cultivation of waste 
lands, and improvement of the soil in accordance 
with a common plan. 

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establish¬ 
ment of industrial armies, especially for agricul¬ 
ture. 

9. Combination of agricultural and manufac¬ 
turing industries. Abolition of the distinction be- 


120 


SOCIALISM 


121 


tween town and country and a more equal distribu¬ 
tion of population. 

10. Free education for all children. Abolition 
of child labor in factories. Combination of educa¬ 
tion with industrial production. 

Some of the tenets of the decalogue of the Com¬ 
munist Manifesto have solid worth; some of the 
suggested revolutionary reforms are now realized 
facts, obtained not by revolution, but by that calm, 
but sure-working law of evolution. Many of the 
planks of the socialist’s platform are retrogres¬ 
sive, opposed to the trend of advancing civilization. 
In a nutshell, Marx’s socialism is but the Prole¬ 
tariat Rule over the classes of the higher forces 
of industry, culture, genius, leadership, art and 
science. It is the rule of poverty over wealth, lazi¬ 
ness over activity, drudgery over work, hate over 
love, materialism over spirituality, failure over 
success, and man’s stupid creed of inertia and re¬ 
gression opposed to the Creator’s plan of evolu¬ 
tion with positive advance toward perfection. 
Marx aspires to overthrow all Bourgeois society 
with its classes and class distinctions, and he sug¬ 
gests the substitution of Proletariat rule which he 
describes as an association “in which the free de¬ 
velopment of each is the condition for the free 
development of all.” 

There can be no free development of each in 
any land of socialism. A proletariat revolutionary 
success would be brief and of no virtue. One 
organized class authority cannot replace another 
with the total destruction and elimination of the 


122 


SOCIALISM 


overthrown. Marx’s creed savors of the militarism 
of Central Europe and his mind has been warped 
by prejudices and association with a knowledge of 
the instruments of force. True socialism in human 
love and comradeship can never be realized by 
force or by the formation of classes and the preach¬ 
ing of class consciousness. After all there is only 
one prime class in the world, and that is humanity; 
only one political class, and that is the people, call 
them what you will. 

The three Mediaeval Estates of Lords Spiritual, 
Lords Temporal, and the Commons have been 
added to by many, some creating a fourth estate 
for the Mob, the Proletariat, or even the Press; 
but the spirit of the day is eliminating classes and 
not adding to their number. Spiritual Lords are 
relics of enchained intellects and represent a period 
when the true religion of the universe, the spirit of 
Christ, was denied men by a Hierarchy of pride 
and ostentation. Temporal Lords—the “Divine 
Right” rulers of chance, autocracy and despotism, 
are rapidly fading from sight and being replaced 
by democracy or the rule of the people. The third 
estate is that of the commoner; it is represented by 
all true Americans, and will be the great surviving 
class of the world. It is the people; the fitting 
reply of the Creator to all the class antagonisms 
of the Old World. Men will for their own pleas¬ 
ure and usefulness divide themselves into groups 
of congeniality, but there will be no classes, no 
proletariat and no bourgeois; our only aristocracy 
being that of the intellect, of human kindliness and 


SOCIALISM 123 

of the expressions of the Eternal within the soul 
of man. 

In this land of freedom, of political equality 
and democracy, the solvent of all class conscious¬ 
ness is education. By embracing the opportunities 
today for acquiring knowledge, the children of the 
Proletariat can fit themselves to occupy those posi¬ 
tions of importance that had been closed to their 
parents through lack of education. If there is an 
imaginary Bourgeois class today, it does not dwell 
in an armed, walled city, but in the open, without 
moats to cross, walls to scale or gates to force. It 
invites the humblest boy, the progeny of the poorest 
Proletariat; and education with democratic oppor¬ 
tunity is battering down the confining barricades of 
Proletarianism that Marx and his School have 
worked feverishly and devilishly to erect in anger 
and fortify in hate. 

The “Scientific Socialists” care naught for social 
reform, social democracy, or any movement that 
tends to overcome a wrong with good, if such 
a movement springs from any other party than 
their own. 

Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the greatest fol¬ 
lowers of Marx, in 1899 said: “Socialism cannot 
conquer and redeem the world if it ceases to be¬ 
lieve in itself ALONE. On the ground of the 
class struggle we are invincible; if we leave it w T e 
are lost—the strength and the power of socialism 
rests in the fact that we are leading a class strug¬ 
gle.” Liebknecht has talked a great deal in his 
life of agitation and stirring propaganda for the 
socialism that is nothing but class hatred. He 


SOCIALISM 


124 

preached “No compromise” with any humane, well 
meaning political platform or creed of unselfish 
love,—“He that reaches out the hand to us for a 
political alliance and intrudes himself upon us as a 
friend and brother—him and him only have we to 
fear.” Is it not an admission of the whole incon¬ 
sistency of such a socialism, that they can only 
maintain themselves as a Party by preaching class 
consciousness and ignoring all the finer attributes 
of human nature? We can turn a favorite saying 
of the German socialist back on himself and say* 
“One who feels at heart that he is in the wrong, 
makes up for the weakness of his case by violence 
of speech.” The Marx-Liebknecht School of So¬ 
cialism says that scientific socialism is the child of 
Bourgeois or capitalist society and its class an¬ 
tagonisms. It is a class struggle for victory, not 
ethics. Socialism, they add, is not pity for poverty, 
enthusiasm for equality and freedom or recognition 
of some social injustice and a determination to re¬ 
move it. They also say that condemnation of 
wealth and respect for poverty, even the forcible 
equalization plan, advocated by Baboeuf, of the 
equalitarians, is not socialism. “No,” they pro¬ 
claim, “Our party rests upon the class struggle as 
the prime condition of its existence.” No matter 
how many millions of followers the Marx School 
of Socialism boasts today, with their determination 
to attempt to form a political party out of the dis¬ 
couraged, depraved, unambitious and revolution¬ 
ary, the lazy and the great unwashed of life, and 
oppose with such a party, the true workmen of the 
world, the self-respecting, ambitious mechanics, 


SOCIALISM 


125 


the mentally poised, skilled and unskilled workers, 
the independent artisans, the managers and stock¬ 
holders of industry, their efforts will all be in vain; 
and such a party void of true ideals and spiritu¬ 
ality and showing an utter lack of the knowledge 
of evolution, will go down in history recorded as 
of no more importance than the Luddite riots and 
the march of Coxey’s army. 

The aristocrats for centuries combined with the 
Commoners to defeat the rising Middle Class. It 
has been said that the aristocracy rallied the com¬ 
mon people to their standard, offering them only 
a Proletariat alms bag, and all that joined were 
branded on their hindquarters with the Feudal 
Coat of Arms. They are accused of objecting to 
the rise of the Bourgeoisie, which would cut up, 
root and branch, the old mediaeval order of society, 
but that their real hatred was against the Prole¬ 
tariat. “They always stooped to pick up the 
golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, 
and to barter truth, love and honor for traffic in 
wool, sugar, etc.” “Christian Socialism,” says 
Marx, “is but the holy water with which the priest 
consecrates the heart burnings of the aristocrat.” 

Long before the days of Marx or of Owen, the 
aristocracy of the earth had become “polluted by 
trade and industry” and the aristocrats or the upper 
plane of existent society joined with the middle 
classes and the rising Proletariat in the exploita¬ 
tion of those machines which revolutionized indus¬ 
try. Without the support of aristocracy, the In¬ 
dustrial Revolution would have been delayed, and 
in the scramble for wealth and more wealth, the 


126 


SOCIALISM 


titled aristocrats, the upper and lower middle class, 
the Jew and the Gentile, the guild master, jour¬ 
neyman, petty Bourgeois and the workmen of 
every class, vied with one another, all engaged in 
a mad rush for gold and the power its possession 
would give. The aristocrat met the Proletariat, 
original capital met brains, and the battle resulted 
in the equalizing of classes. The trophies won 
have been, almost without exception, gained by the 
poor workers and thinkers, the humble Proletariat. 
The poorest families of England have given birth 
to titled peers; the humblest boys of America have 
become capitalists, masters of industry, and the 
Presidents of our Republic of Democracy. How 
can we have class consciousness when there is no 
class, and when the fortunes of all men, when 
viewed from a distance, may vary like the weather, 
sometimes fair, sometimes stormy. There is no 
one class today that cannot enjoy the sun and house 
themselves against the storm. Man with purpose 
and with passion to develop himself according to 
his inherent ability, eliminates all class conscious¬ 
ness and walks as a god among gods and not as a 
cringing, old-time Proletariat, a veritable Ishmael. 
There is too much love in the world today, too 
much soul, to permit any victories to be won by 
class socialism. 

The Proletariat Movement was not a class move¬ 
ment conceived and engineered by the down-trod¬ 
den poor; all such pernicious doctrines have orig¬ 
inated in the minds of members of the so-called 
middle and upper classes, and many of them have 
been ambitious to right wrongs in a way that would 


SOCIALISM 


127 


give great fame and power to themselves. Marx 
was the son of a successful lawyer, and received a 
university education at Bonn and Berlin. He re¬ 
ceived the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and in¬ 
tended to become a college professor. His wife 
was of the aristocracy of both Britain and Ger¬ 
many. Many astute workmen branded Marx as 
an “Intellectual,” void of true human feeling, and 
he never reached the hearts of the Proletariat he 
desired to lead to revolutionary victory. Engels 
was the well educated son of a prosperous German 
manufacturer. He studied labor conditions in 
England, wrote well, was never of the working 
class, and like Marx, had practically no power with 
the British Proletariat. Ferdinand Lassalle was 
the son of a very prosperous merchant in Breslau, 
Germany, and like both Marx and Engels, was a 
Jew. Lassalle was a university man, and while 
posing as the Messiah of the poor, was really an 
aristocrat of decidedly fashionable and luxurious 
habits. His suppers were well known as the most 
extravagant in Berlin, and his biographer writes: 
“It was the most piquant feature of his life that 
he, one of the gilded youth, a connoisseur in wines, 
and a learned man to boot, had become agitator 
and the champion of the working man.” Lassalle 
was mixed up in a scandal with Countess Hatz- 
feldt, who was separated from her husband. He 
was killed in a duel brought on by a love affair 
with the daughter of a Bavarian diplomat. Las- 
salle’s greatest difficulty in his two and a half years 
of socialistic propaganda was with the workmen 
themselves, for among them he met with discour- 


128 


SOCIALISM 


aging apathy. He succeeded, however, in starting 
a definite socialistic movement in Germany, al¬ 
though he really cared nothing for the Proletariat; 
his dream was to be enthroned as the President 
of the German Republic, and the people were 
merely the means by which he sought to reach his 
goal. 

Rodbertus and Saint-Simon were aristocrats; 
Blanc was born of aristocratic parents, but being 
reduced to poverty, he felt his condition keenly 
and fought against the oppression of poverty with 
a sincerity which was later influenced by politics. 
Morris was an aesthetic, an emotional, artistic tem¬ 
perament, yearning for beauty in things and in the 
men who dotted his landscapes and frequented his 
homes. At heart, he loathed the Proletariat, and 
the poor had so little love for him that they prac¬ 
tically drove him from their midst. Owen was 
ultimately a capitalist and a philanthropist, but he 
was born of very humble stock; he served for sev¬ 
eral years in a Dry Goods store behind the counter 
and started in business for himself on a borrowed 
capital of five hundred dollars. Owen is a case of 
a Proletaire forced to work when nine years old, 
borrowing money at eighteen years of age and be¬ 
coming a capitalist and a most successful one. But 
even Owen, risen as he was from the ranks in those 
days of great prejudices, found it extremely diffi¬ 
cult to win the confidence of his workers when he 
moved as a capitalist from Manchester to New 
Lanark and married the daughter of the proprietor 
of the Scotch Mills. 

The working classes have had good reason to be 


SOCIALISM 


129 


skeptical of socialistic agitators, and even of un¬ 
balanced reformers who, with their feet off the 
solid ground, dramatically preach an equality 
which the least intelligent of the masses know can¬ 
not exist among themselves or between themselves 
and their employers. To preach and act political 
freedom, liberty of conscience and free use of the 
ballot, is sense which appeals to any man with blood 
in his veins; but to declare for absolute equality 
of all mankind, as many socialistic business organ¬ 
izers have done, is to censure God for his creation, 
burlesque life, and undo all the good that a well- 
poised policy of love, brotherhood and justice 
would create. 

Godin, who owned the greatest foundries of 
North France, carried equality to a ridiculous ex¬ 
treme. He lived in the same buildings with his 
workmen, but in the theatre he had seats apart and 
reserved for himself and his family. Did the work¬ 
men appreciate the equality theory and philan¬ 
thropy of their master? Not at all. A workman 
discussing the communistic atmosphere of the 
foundry, said: ‘‘Godin was true to his principle up 
to a certain point, but we never liked it that he did 
not watch the play from seats with the rest of us.” 
Workmen do not relish paternalism. They may 
talk socialism, but at heart they are individualists; 
they love their own selected social circles, they 
crave exclusiveness at times as do all real men. A 
certain type of well meaning employer is as ob¬ 
noxious to a workman as a lazy tramp is to the 
capitalist. Workmen advance by the expression 
of their individualism. They ask not for charity, 


130 


SOCIALISM 


worldly philanthropy, paternalism; they can take 
care of themselves, they desire to be independent. 
They do not want what does not belong to them; 
all they ask for, and diligently strive for, is justice. 
Class agitation to the true worker is a battle cry 
of revolution, aimed not at the aristocracy, capitalist 
or Bourgeois, but directed at himself, threaten¬ 
ing all that is inspiring within him and aiming at 
the veritable motive forces of his soul, which 
through the ages have been leading mankind be¬ 
yond class distinction to the highest realm of 
knowledge and humanity and to the subjugation of 
nature and the thorough enjoyment of nature’s 
bounties. 


CHAPTER XV 

Socialism and Competition 


S OCIALISM is so indefinable that each 
learned advocate presents new conceptions 
that his associates generally repudiate. We 
have heard that socialism is a collectivism which 
excludes private possession of land and capital and 
places them under social ownership in some form 
or other. Schaffle said: “The Alpha and Omega 
of Socialism is the transformation of private, com¬ 
peting capitals under a united, collective capital.” 
Janet goes further and states that socialism is 
“every doctrine which teaches that the state has a 
right to correct the inequality of wealth which 
exists among men and to legally establish the 
balance, by taking from those who have too much, 
in order to give to those who have not enough; and 
that in a permanent manner and not in such and 
such a particular case, as, for instance, a famine 
or a public calamity.” Laveleye believes that 
socialism is an equality but not a revolutionary 
movement, and he says: “In the first place, every 
socialistic doctrine aims at introducing greater 
equality in social conditions, and in the second 
place, at realizing these reforms by the law and the 
state.” We are now reaching more humane defi¬ 
nitions of socialism, quite different in their essence 
from the bulldozing, intolerant class doctrines, 
charged with Prussian militarism run riot. Adolf 

131 


132 


SOCIALISM 


Held said: “We may define as socialistic every 
tendency which demands the subordination of the 
individual will to the community.” This is an ex¬ 
tremely broad conception of socialism, for it is one 
of the prime tenets of that true individualism which 
feels that society and the individual are interde¬ 
pendent and that both exist for the good of the 
other. Individualism, however, demands, and is 
determined to have fair play and justice in its 
dealings with the body social. 

Roscher, the German economist, defined social¬ 
ism as “those tendencies which demand a greater 
regard for the common weal than consists with 
human nature.” Roscher, therefore, unconsciously 
affirms that true socialism or societarianism is the 
expression of man’s highest self. Would that we 
could find a word to express the heart-interplay 
and co-operation of individuals, that has not been 
so hopelessly abused as “Socialism.” Expansive 
individualism as evidenced by man, actuated with 
the ultra-rationalism of the true spirit of life and 
progress, is true socialism. Here we obtain a pic¬ 
ture diametrically opposed in every respect to that 
of the repugnant, revolutionary Proletariat imaged 
by Marx and permeated with a class hatred that 
could never be real. The Roscher conception of 
socialism could not become a political movement, 
for it is an ideal, an attitude void of political power 
or aggrandizement. 

Socialism, notwithstanding its boast of millions 
of votes cast in its behalf per annum, is such a 
variable doctrine that its measurement by votes 
means but little in the real trend of social prog- 


SOCIALISM 


133 


ress, year by year. It is only a theory and has 
never gained and held any genuine, practical foot¬ 
ing in life. It represents today a mass of hypo¬ 
theses presented to mankind in myriad forms for 
his consideration, with at times much soap-box 
oratory, blare of horns, fanatical literature, revo¬ 
lutionary agitation, veiled threats or sincere and 
earnest intellectual propaganda. 

But what can the busy man of today know about 
socialism? If he reads the books of A, he feels 
that he is almost an authority on the subject. In 
a desire to obtain possibly a trifle more amplifica¬ 
tion of the subject, he reads the writings of B, and 
instantly all his knowledge of socialism becomes 
negative. The works of C and D are digested 
and socialism becomes a maze of contradictions, a 
mass of individual Utopian ravings, with Marx 
shining forth here, Fourier there, Rodbertus, Las- 
salle and the Fabians parading across some pages, 
and rambling, incoherent nothingness permeating 
the whole. The student is apt to see in the true 
democracy and social reforms evidenced by evolu¬ 
tion, the path to perfection that impractical social¬ 
ism can never realize. Most socialists of today 
affirm that socialism is an uncompromising rejec¬ 
tion of the economic optimism implied in the his¬ 
toric doctrine of “Laissez-faire.” It is, therefore, 
a repudiation of the doctrine that gave America 
her true liberty and independence and has raised 
thirteen little colonies to the largest and proudest, 
compact nation on earth. It denounces the Jeffer- 
sonian spirit of democracy which found its noblest 
expressions in our “Declaration of Independence” 


134 


SOCIALISM 


and in splendid Virginian reforms. Socialism 
arrays itself against the overthrow of feudal and 
ecclesiastical oppression; it stifles genius and dis¬ 
courages merit; and carried further back, we see 
that it must, if consistent, urge the return of all 
social life to an existence of mere, primitive com¬ 
munism, much as the modern socialist would re¬ 
pudiate this logical conclusion. 

The doctrine of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth 
Centuries was not so much the doctrine of “Let- 
us-alone” as it was a doctrine of “Give-us-a- 
chance.” Liberated from spiritual and temporal 
oppression, with reasoning powers and knowledge 
of life deepened by the printing press, men, figu¬ 
ratively speaking, strained in the leashes of tra¬ 
ditional mind impressions and class consciousness, 
and then at the call of the Spirit of Life, leaped 
to their opportunity. To such men is due the hom¬ 
age of the world. These are the real individuals, 
overcomers of emasculated traditions, kings of 
initiative, prophets and seers, who perceived needs 
and not only left their imaginative impressions for 
oncoming generations, but jumped into the fray 
and with the work of hands and brains, advanced 
the world in that knowledge which begets true 
civilization and carries humanity nearer its ulti¬ 
mate goal. 

The doctrine of “Laissez-faire” is opposed by 
modern socialism because, we are told, it aims at 
the least possible interference with industrial com¬ 
petition, between persons individually and groups 
of collective individuals. Competition is the viril¬ 
ity of life, the heart-blood of progress, the builder 


SOCIALISM 


135 


of civilization, and the underlying cause of all 
greatness, genius, success and prosperity. Compe¬ 
tition, unrestrained, will do harm the same as char¬ 
ity or faith exercised without control. The Ameri¬ 
can who told his fellow citizens, who endeavored in 
vain to regulate his selfish aggressiveness, “The 

public be d-” was not an individualist, but an 

autocratic anarchist, and many of this class were 
produced in Britain in the first half of the Nine¬ 
teenth Century, and in our own country during the 
latter half of the same century. Collectivism would 
rob life of both zest and progress. We hear the 
shout today, “Competition is hell”; so it is if 
unrestrained, but so are many other qualities that 
make up life. Competition keys one up to play 
the real part in life for which he is fitted; it carries 
with it recognition, not of chance, fortuitous birth, 
push or pull or social procedure, but it gives a clear 
track ahead and a fair track for all. Each indi¬ 
vidual should be sportsman enough to cry “Let 
the best man win,” instead of complaining that he 
is handicapped because of one or a hundred and one 
peculiar reasons which, when analyzed, are gener¬ 
ally the outcome of laziness, selfishness or depravity 
on the part of the complainant. 

The law of evolution demands the Survival of 
the Fittest in life and the development of powers 
according to usage. Edmond Kelly was con¬ 
verted to a form of socialism different from that 
of all other propagandists, and thus added one 
more species to befog the movement; but in his 
book of “Twentieth Century Socialism,” written 
just prior to his death in 1909, he says: “One 



136 


SOCIALISM 


reason why communism has been discarded by the 
Socialist Party is that generations of competition 
have so molded human nature that it is extremely 
probable that production would suffer were it sud¬ 
denly eliminated.” Another authority has stated 
that man should have all he earns and not be de¬ 
prived of it by the thriftless or vicious, as under 
the communism of earlier times. Such statements 
undermine the doctrine of socialism’s opposition 
to competition and its unqualified endorsement of 
equality. 

But perhaps this gelatinous, sociological farrago 
is intended to be a panacea for all the individual’s 
social ills and prejudices. To one who hates com¬ 
petition, it can refer to authorities who decry every 
phase of competition. To one who longs for ab¬ 
solute equality, it can find many accepted social¬ 
istic leaders who preach equality. If an unbal¬ 
anced ragamuffin wants to look forward to a day 
when the wealth of the world will be divided 
equally among all men, socialism can even accom¬ 
modate him with a somnolent hope from the allure¬ 
ments of writers whom active workers long ago 
repudiated. 

As soon as workers commenced to own their own 
homes, rise to respectability, and assert the equality 
of nobility of fives and soul, the socialist of the 
school of equal division of wealth found it expe¬ 
dient to back-peddle on a doctrine that would re¬ 
sult, not in adding to a working man’s small accu¬ 
mulated wealth, but according to all statistics, would 
actually take from him to give to many, among 
whom the industrious worker knew were spend- 


SOCIALISM 


137 


thrifts, drunkards and habitual loafers or “ne’er 
do wells.” We have heard socialists say that after 
the reconstruction of society there will be no 
bosses and no bossed; Engels has said there will 
be no state; but all such doctrines are anarchy. 
Another authority says socialism is “that policy 
or theory which aims at securing by the action 
of the central democratic authority, a better dis¬ 
tribution and in due subordination thereunto, a 
better production of wealth than now prevails.” 
Such socialism requires government and law, a 
democratic majority rule of the people and a 
gradual evolutionary reform which will overcome 
existing evils and prevent pernicious abuses or 
errors of ignorance and thoughtlessness. We have 
already reached the plane where a better dis¬ 
tribution of wealth is in evidence, and as the 
world advances in aggregate wealth, our social 
conditions will so adjust themselves that the Pro¬ 
letariat will be eliminated, and the people fitted 
for greater usefulness will enjoy a large precent- 
age of this newly created wealth. The accumula¬ 
tion of vast, unwieldly fortunes and the continu¬ 
ance of such fortunes unbroken to single progeny, 
is now receiving its death knell. Bourgeois for¬ 
tunes have reached the zenith of magnitude and in 
future all who contribute to pronounced success 
will receive reward more equitably according to 
service rendered. 

Henry George uttered a fundamental truth 
when he said: “The ideal social state is not that 
in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but 


138 


SOCIALISM 


in which each gets in proportion to his contribu¬ 
tion to the general stock.” This is an expression 
of individualism—inequality of ability and in¬ 
equality of compensation. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Socialism and Public Ownership 

S OCIALISM would assume the management 
of industry and own all national resources 
and instruments of production for the public 
good, securing for all an equitable distribution of 
its fruits. We have seen that equitable distribu¬ 
tion means absolute equality to some schools and 
to others it means pay in proportion to service 
rendered; so again we have indefiniteness. Some 
writers affirm that all wealth should be placed 
under social ownership and control; others maintain 
that it would be impossible to hold all wealth in 
common and that socialism means either state or 
municipal ownership for the people of the land, 
the large centralized workshops, and the materials 
and means of production on a large scale. Again 
we find it difficult to follow the conflicting and 
chameleon thoughts of socialists. If all wealth 
cannot be socialized, where shall we draw the line? 
When does an industry, factory or farm become 
large enough to be acquired by the state and 
socialized ? 

We are told that the great American combines, 
popularly known as Trusts, are operating to make 
ownership by the people a simple procedure. En¬ 
thusiastic socialists advise the repeal of the Sher¬ 
man and anti-trust laws and the encouragement 
of industries to combine, in order that, when they 


139 


140 


SOCIALISM 


have reached their maximum growth and all the 
small competitors have been eliminated or bought 
out, the state, which means the socialists in power, 
can absorb the industries, acquire the combined 
farms, take over all railroads and other transpor¬ 
tation lines, telegraph and telephone wires and 
plants, and create at one swoop a socialistic gov¬ 
ernment of the people and for the people. But 
how about the millions of citizens with their earn¬ 
ings invested in bonds and stocks of these acquired 
properties and operations? That is a question the 
socialist would much rather not talk about. If you 
study their writings you will find that almost all 
advocate the inauguration of a socialistic reign by 
robbery—the theft of all that the leaders and pro¬ 
ducers of the state possess, the absolute confisca¬ 
tion of the savings of thrift and industry. Can one 
imagine the realization of a millennium founded 
on banditism and spoliation and the iron heel of a 
political socialized despotism? “An advance to¬ 
ward heaven upon earth founded upon robbery 
would infallibly be a step in the other direction— 
backward, not forward; downward, not upward.” 

Some of the leaders of the “Moderate” brand of 
socialism perceive the impossibility of acquiring 
land and industry by theft or force; some advocate 
a steadily increasing tax on land, thus taxing it 
into state ownership. Of late, as men of higher 
calibre have become interested in certain phases of 
socialism, and as the working man is recognized to 
be an actual capitalist, with small investments 
which represent his all, at stake, or a capitalist in 
embryo, there is a tendency on the part of social- 


SOCIALISM 


141 


ists to express the hope that they will be able to 
pay for all the properties that they acquire, but 
in a way that, by law of inheritance, would make 
all men of equal worth in some future generation. 
It is said that when Gladstone was asked about 
socialism he replied: “Do you propose to buy the 
land, or to take it? If the first, it is folly; if the 
second, it is theft.” 

There is no doubt that capital has abused its 
privileges in the past and the people will demand 
of it helpfulness and justice now and in the future. 
Capital can never again be an arbitrary force to 
dominate and subjugate free men; and no matter 
how it may combine, its prime thought should not 
be power, but service. Burke said: “All persons 
possessing any portion of power ought to be 
strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that 
they act in trust and that they are to account for 
their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, 
Author and Founder of society.” 

Municipal ownership is a step toward socialism. 
The city ownership of its street car service, its 
water, gas and electric lights, is the first step 
toward an ideal, which in some settings have 
worked quite well and in others most deplorably. 
State ownership of railroads and control of indus¬ 
try have in some parts of the world passed the 
experimental stage and in no case have the at¬ 
tempts to eliminate private control produced the 
results desired. 

Could any corporation under private manage¬ 
ment, or operated by officials and a board selected 
or approved by its stockholders survive, if oper- 


142 


SOCIALISM 


ated as loosely and inefficiently as any of our cities, 
states or Federal Government? It would become 
insolvent in a very short time, no matter what its 
resources might be. Even when our municipal, 
state or federal officials are honest, the machinery 
of government seems to be as cumbersome and 
inefficient as it can possibly be made by human 
ignorance or stupidity. Experience with politi¬ 
cally appointed or Civil Service public servants 
is an antidote for socialism; a few days in a “live- 
wire” corporation that hustles, with no loose ends, 
every minute of the day for its stockholders, em¬ 
ployees, customers and the general public are an 
inspiration to the onlooker and an additional nail 
in the casket of decadent socialism. 

Real men love to work, to belong to a real 
company that does things, that strives for superi¬ 
ority, individuality of product and elimination of 
waste. They rally as good, true, industrial soldiers 
around a flag of progress; the joy of achievement 
is in their hearts, and such workers will finish 
a task, go home and enjoy the fruits of their 
work with cheerful minds and happy hearts; while 
the socialized employee of the people, a sort of 
institutional being, void of energy and the spirit 
of progress, and with the air of—“do no more 
than you have to do”—drags his steps, watches the 
clock, hates himself and everybody else, and re¬ 
ceives money that he probably does not earn. 
Such a man becomes stultified mentally, and at 
times his only joy seems to be the innate thought 
that he can subtly worry others and yet cannot 


SOCIALISM 


148 


be ‘‘fired” and forced to do real work like a man 
in the world. Some officials, clerks and Civil 
Service men are pronounced exceptions, but it is 
difficult to imagine a more depraved economic 
condition than political handling of the entire re¬ 
sources, industries, transportation and business 
of a land like this. The picture is such a night¬ 
mare that the intelligence of a great people would 
not tolerate the thought of it. 

A few years ago, Edmond Kelly, a pseudo¬ 
socialist, made some wonderful calculations of a 
most impractical nature. He computed that prob¬ 
ably four hours will constitute the average daily 
labor in a co-operative commonwealth, and these 
ought to be sufficient to give to every citizen “not 
only the necessaries and comforts now enjoyed by 
the middle class, but some of the luxuries enjoyed 
only by the millionaire.” He did not stop there, 
however, but by still further sharpening of his 
pencil, he found that the pay of each man would be 
doubled and the cost of all articles would be low¬ 
ered. Kelly having been a lecturer on Municipal 
Government at Columbia University, must have 
had some theoretical knowledge of labor and labor 
conditions. If political control of this land with 
all its operations became a reality, we would be a 
bankrupt, discredited democracy, and twelve 
hours per day, per man, with one-half his present 
wages, would not save us from the rocks with 
reckless steering and devitalized manhood. Before 
we can talk intelligently of more socialized indus¬ 
tries, we should make a business success of the 
matters already entrusted to the Body Politic of 


144 


SOCIALISM 


the country, state or city. Taxes and deficits 
show up the economic inefficiency of political gov¬ 
ernment, as notoriously evil as grafting, police cor¬ 
ruption and inertia of departmental work. 

No industry can be operated successfully as a 
socialized operation. For every line of human 
endeavor we need co-operation, but the work must 
be done by individuals. An industry must be 
conducted by an organization of individuals, not 
by a socialized mob; it must be a disciplined, 
obedient, human machine, not an aggregation of 
ill-fitting, indifferent, inexperienced and insubor¬ 
dinate social equals and wire-pullers. A man to 
manage an industry, an engineer to design ma¬ 
chines, experts of operation and geniuses of con¬ 
ception, must be men selected by merit and com¬ 
petition from the world, and so placed as to work 
in harmonious concert with each other and with 
all the interconnected groups and individuals 
which combined, form the entire organization. 

The only way to socialize an industry is to know 
how to place each man at the work for which he 
is best fitted; to make the team-work of the men 
pleasant; to study each man psychologically; and 
by the sure working law of human fitness and 
congeniality, an organization of individuals, the 
extreme opposite of a socialistic staff of laborers, 
will be produced, working with that fine, all- 
conquering spirit of co-operation—“All for one 
and one for all.” 

There used to be an opinion prevalent that the 
lowest classes of labor were the hardest workers. 


SOCIALISM 


145 


In a land of freedom, democracy and individualism 
the reverse is true. The hardest workers in our 
land today are not the poor Proletariat, but the 
leading men who operate our industries and execu¬ 
tively supervise the great undertakings of Ameri¬ 
can capital and human endeavor. The ordinary 
worker quits his job when the whistle blows; for 
the manager there is no whistle and no limit to his 
hours of work; for the leading executive of a 
highly competitive industry, life consists of work, 
—steady, maintained work, from dawn to dark,— 
and he usually carries his responsibilities into his 
hours of rest. To the real leader of a great in¬ 
dustry, such work, with all its shades of color, 
bright lights and shadows, brings joy as well as 
success and inner happiness with the consciousness 
of achievement. The success of American indus¬ 
try and the root of our great prosperity can be 
found in the enthusiasm of our workers saddled 
with responsibility and the ambitions of the men 
all the way down the line to fit themselves for 
higher planes of usefulness by using their hours 
of leisure as hours of preparation for greater re¬ 
sponsibility and service. 

Some socialists say that when they socialize an 
industry they will keep the organization intact 
and the process if now successful, will become 
doubly successful, for the men will be partners as 
well as co-workers. We are led to believe that 
menial labor will be paid as much as skilled work¬ 
ers and managers. Socialism is indefinite on all 
these points, but there are several facts that social- 


146 


SOCIALISM 


ists should know. No true worker will stand for 
any uniform wage scale. Every real worker wants 
some scale lower than his and desires the oppor¬ 
tunity to work upward to a higher scale. The law 
of humanity is opposed to socialization of workers. 
Take the experienced, highly specialized manage¬ 
ment from the head of an industry and it will 
crumble to pieces. The difference between bank¬ 
ruptcy and good dividends is often represented, in 
large business enterprises today, by the work of 
one man, who, opposed to all the laws of social¬ 
ism, is an individual at the head of a large in¬ 
dustry and has peculiar genius for that particular 
field of endeavor. The same conditions, to a much 
smaller extent, apply down the line, to the fore¬ 
man of a shop and the leader of a gang. Men 
make a success of work by functioning as indi¬ 
viduals. A fitness for work and a finding of the 
proper work come from the competitive system, 
when a man tries a job, wins out, and holds it; 
another tries for a position, obtains it, is unfitted 
for it, loses it and another more fitted for the work 
takes his place, while the original incumbent 
merely moves to another task for which he is fitted 
by nature and training. 

Socialism is changing its doctrine daily. Its 
leading advocates today say that they will only 
attempt to handle, socially, public utilities and 
industries that they believe can be operated as 
economically by socialization as by competitive 
methods. When some socialists talk of non-moles¬ 
tation of all small industries, farms and operations 


SOCIALISM 


147 


that are not a menace to the well-being of a peo¬ 
ple; when they admit that competition has virtue; 
that wages should be commensurate with services, 
that they may buy instead of steal whatever capi¬ 
tal and properties they may desire to socialize; 
that they believe in the obtaining of their ends by 
a peaceful, political victory at the polls and not 
by violent revolution and class upheavals, then we 
are forced to admit that socialism is not socialism, 
that the word has so many shades of meaning that 
it represents today merely social reform and a 
multiplicity of ways and desires that blend more 
or less into the beliefs of every sane man. Every 
man can be a socialist today, no matter what his 
belief may be, but every socialist cannot be a true 
individualist. 

The leaders of socialism claim that it is the 
economic complement of democracy. Democracy 
needs no such burden; it is complete in itself. It 
preaches not bureaucracy, but the just rule of man 
for the highest good and development of all,— 
true individualism bounded with social ties of 
brotherhood; ties of the human heart and not the 
ties of arbitrary laws, based on a false conception 
of the Eternal and His creations. 


CHAPTER XVII 
Socialism as Unethical 

M ANY men have imagined themselves social¬ 
ists or in favor of socialism, in the past, 
without using their reasoning power or 
exercising any semblance of logic; they have been 
actuated primarily from sympathy with human 
suffering. As we have seen, the socialistic war¬ 
riors of the Marx-Engels-Liebknecht army do not 
want such sympathizers in their ranks. Kautsky 
in his Holland lectures on Revolutionary Social¬ 
ism, in 1902, was forced to admit that, notwith¬ 
standing the “infallibility” of his patron saint, 
—Marx, “the classes are not divided from one 
another by impenetrable walls.” He admitted 
that a higher standard of life was permeating all 
society, both Bourgeois and Proletaire, that wages 
were higher, but he adds that the rising standard 
of life rouses the envy of the lower classes. 

The poorer classes of workers live today on a 
scale infinitely higher than ever before in the his¬ 
tory of the world. We still have debasing slums 
and horrors of segregation; but when the workers 
get out of the congested sections of big cities, their 
regeneration commences. The educated children 
help to lift their parents to a higher plane of 
decency and respectability and workmen advance 
from unskilled to skilled labor. The food on the 
workman’s table today is superior to that of the 

148 


SOCIALISM 


149 


aristocracy of centuries ago and to the Middle 
Class of not many decades ago. The workman 
and his family enjoy sanitary conveniences that 
were unknown half a century ago to all classes. 
The Bourgeois may enjoy more luxuries today, 
but the working, lower classes are enjoying com¬ 
forts to such a degree that their acquisition is most 
disturbing to the class socialist, whose whine of 
discontent does not materially affect the man with 
full stomach, bank deposit book, house with bath 
and running water, garden with flowers and veg¬ 
etables, and sons and daughters in the High 
Schools receiving as good an education as any 
youngster in the town. Labor is honored today, 
and the social fakers who win over empty dinner 
pails do not interest materially the worker who 
knows and who is enjoying comforts and his just 
due in a competitive but socialized community. 

If the standing policy of society is justice to all, 
with no difference between the justice meted out to 
the rich and influential and that given to the poor 
and comparatively helpless; if brotherly interest 
and helpfulness permeate society, giving all men 
their just due and helping the worthy needy out 
of the fulness of the accumulation of success, then 
the germ of any brand of socialism cannot exist 
in such an atmosphere, for socialism is antagonistic 
to universal justice and knows not love. 

The socialist cannot get his mind away from 
capital. The two rubber pillars of the socialistic 
edifice are wages (equal or unequal), and capital 
(shall we buy or steal it?). We hear of the Plu¬ 
tocracies crushing the souls of men and we are 


150 


SOCIALISM 


repeatedly told that this is the age of capital 
oppression. Jack London wrote: “We must ac¬ 
cept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as 
about on a par with the earliest monkey stage. 
The human had to pass through those stages in its 
rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. 
It was inevitable that much of the mire and slime 
should cling and be not easily shaken off.” Lon¬ 
don’s theory of evolution must be a cycle—a de¬ 
velopment from monkey to man and then a retro¬ 
gressive return to monkey, or the organic world 
would be a perfected whole at one period only to 
return quickly to a mass of slimy protoplasm. We 
cannot definitely prove our kinship with the 
monkey kingdom, but we are assured that the much 
maligned capitalistic period is far superior to 
many glimpses of civilization that London has 
seen. Were not the Eighteenth and Nineteenth 
Centuries at their worst, superior to the periods of 
imprisoned souls, fettered minds and the degrada¬ 
tion of superstitions, serfdom and continual strife 
that preceded them? But London does not refer 
to the hideousness following the Industrial Revo¬ 
lution, but his remarks apply to the period in which 
we now live. 

There can be no capitalistic phase of evolution, 
for capital exists for the many, is owned by the 
many, and all have equal rights to obtain, have 
and hold. In the history read in the future, the 
present will be accounted a period of adjustment 
or social reconstruction, of the triumphs of democ¬ 
racy. But capital which lost its head for two cen¬ 
turies was merely a centrifugal movement from the 


SOCIALISM 


151 


revolving wheel of progress and the solidity and 
love of justice of mankind have refused to permit 
it to defy the laws of centripetal, social gravitation. 

It is amusing to read of the plans of the social¬ 
ists, “the day after the Revolution.” Capital, a 
much hated word, they cannot do without; it has 
existed from the earliest glimpse of the dawn of 
civilization, and it will exist as long as man. It 
has the virtues and vices of man and it will be 
redeemed like man. Capitalism can never be an 
epoch of evolution any more than a man’s clothes. 
Some writers on Socialism have discovered a splen¬ 
did use for private capital. They advise that all 
inventions and schemes for new, advanced proc¬ 
esses be experimented with by private capital 
and when such new methods of production are 
perfected, the state will acquire them; the state 
never intends to waste its money in research or 
experimentation, but will leave that field to pri¬ 
vate capital, which, of course, will jump with joy 
at the opportunity to spend money to obtain re¬ 
sults that the state will promptly steal. What 
sniveling, inane schemes are advanced under the 
wretchedly abused name of Socialism! 

The sanctity of family life is still another plank 
of the platform of socialism, that shows different 
on each face, but which is generally quite rotten. 
We have discussed the Utopian socialistic lax ideas 
on marriage. Marx and Engels advocated an 
openly legalized community of women with state 
supervision of the children, saying: “We desire to 
introduce in substitution for the hypocritically 
concealed, an openly legalized community of 


152 


SOCIALISM 


women.” Lamartine, discussing the Revolution 
of 1848, said: “Communism of goods leads as a 
necessary consequence to communism of wives, 
children and parents, and to the brutalization of 
the species.” Jager said that the possession of 
land in common leads also to community of wives, 
as but another expression of materialistic concep¬ 
tions. Karl Pearson, a noted socialistic writer, 
says: “I hold that the sex-relationship ought to be 
a pure question of taste, a simple matter of agree¬ 
ment, in which neither society nor the state would 
have any right to interfere.” Gabriel Deville and 
Bebel, both declare that compulsory marriage is 
unnecessary, and many more socialists maintain 
that with the abolition of hereditary property, 
should go the necessity for marriage. They also 
maintain that family life is eternally at war with 
social life, and is inherently selfish. Hepworth 
Dixon says “that you cannot have socialism with¬ 
out introducing communism, is the teaching of all 
experience, whether the trials have been made on 
a large scale or on a small scale, in the Old World 
or in the New.” Jules Guesde, one of the leaders 
of international socialism, writes: “The family was 
useful and indispensable in the past, but is now 
only an odious form of property. It must either 
be transformed or abolished.” 

But there is another side to the question. Where¬ 
as the earliest forms of socialism and the Marx 
School of Modern Socialism and many others of 
the day believe in the abolition of marriage, there 
are a vast number of socialists who differ from their 
brethren in this phase of socialism and who do not 


SOCIALISM 


153 


hesitate to openly and positively declare themselves 
accordingly. If socialism expects many followers 
in these enlightened days, it is timely that its lead¬ 
ers should respect the sanctity of the home, and 
that marriage, which is a sacrament and the true 
foundation of society, should be revered and hon¬ 
ored by all. The commoner of today, be he Bour¬ 
geois or Proletariat, capitalist or workman, loves 
his home; it is his in all its completeness, sacred 
and inviolable. He will never listen seriously to 
any doctrine that teaches the breaking up of family 
life, an immorality opposed to the spirit of life 
and the removal of that anchorage indispensable 
to the well being and moral training of his children. 
Socialists had to change their creed or there would 
have been no listeners to the propagandist; and 
socialism would have died because of the inherent 
purity and goodness of the race, notwithstanding 
the leprous insinuation of those who, being evil, 
think and see only evil. 

Spargo says that the abolition of the legal mar¬ 
riage tie is not now a part of the socialist’s pro¬ 
gram. Kirkup says that the International and 
Socialistic Parties clearly recognize now that their 
task is the emancipation of labor and that it is of 
an economic and political nature; those who mix 
up this great problem with questions of religion 
and marriage do so on their own responsibility. 
Edmond Kelly, who was too broad-gauged to be a 
“dyed-in-the-wool” socialist, openly asserts the 
necessity for maintaining the sanctity of the home. 
But almost without exception the socialist leaders 
ignore this topic and leave it out of their talk as 


154 


SOCIALISM 


well as out of their program. As their attitude 
as a class seems most lukewarm, we are led to be¬ 
lieve that their silence is due to the fact that, if 
they expressed their real thoughts, the effect would 
act as a boomerang and bring disaster to their 
party. 

The same general thought applies to religion. 
Many socialists are agnostics, few profess any de¬ 
fined faith, some seem atheistic, but undoubtedly 
there are many who have an underlying spirituality 
that will keep them in touch with the universal 
flow of life, show them their errors, encourage 
them in all that is good and true, and in the years 
to come, this or some succeeding generation will 
probably see that the multitudinous paths of prog¬ 
ress will all merge into one glorious revelation of 
unity. 

The Prussian socialist, Marx, has still many fol¬ 
lowers, including some of the partisan writers in 
this country, but his plan of class hatred and revo¬ 
lution is so impossible and inhuman that his doc¬ 
trine is being continually repudiated by socialists. 
Edward Bernstein, in 1899, formulated a Mani¬ 
festo of Criticisms to practically all the leading 
positions taken by Marx. Bernstein objects to 
Marx’s materialistic conception of history, his 
dialectical method, his theory of surplus value and 
his revolutionary conception of social development, 
which looks forward to a great catastrophe at the 
close of the Capitalistic Era. Bernstein maintains 
“that statistics do not favor the theory that a social 
catastrophe is imminent as the result of a class war 
carried on by a continually increasing host of im- 


SOCIALISM 


155 


poverished and degraded Proletarians against a 
diminishing band of the colossal magnates of cap¬ 
italism/’ and he has great faith in a peaceful evo¬ 
lution through the democratic transformation of 
the state. The School of Bernstein in Germany is 
the School of Revisionism and it looks forward to 
the day when the German Empire, with its autoc¬ 
racy and debasing militarism will become a peace- 
loving, German co-operative commonwealth. 

Liebknecht was notorious for his policy of “No 
compromise/’ which meant “no change by evolu¬ 
tion,” although he preached evolution; his death 
was followed by the death in 1913 of August 
Bebel, the last colleague and contemporary of 
Marx. German socialism today is not a united 
body; it consists of social democracy and so-called 
radicals and Revisionists. Even these prime divi¬ 
sions are further subdivided, but throughout the 
whole it is evident that the pernicious doctrine of 
Marx is rapidly being repudiated and that social¬ 
ism stands for almost every conceivable form of 
protest against the prevailing autocratic rule, 
coupled with variable ideas for social reconstruc¬ 
tion. 

There is marked similarity between the Revision¬ 
ists of Germany and the Fabian Society and the 
Independent Labor Party of Britain. The famous 
Fabian Society was named after Quintus Fabius 
Maximus, the Roman General, who carefully 
avoided a direct contest on the field of war. The 
motto of the Society is: “For the right moment 
you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently when 
warring against Hannibal, though many censured 


156 


SOCIALISM 


his delays; but when the time comes you must 
strike hard as Fabius did or your waiting will be 
in vain, and fruitless.” The Fabians and Oppor¬ 
tunists have recently become more cordial in their 
relations with the Independent Labor Party of 
Great Britain, and a spirit of association and not 
antagonism generally prevails. Among the Fa¬ 
bians have appeared some of the brightest minds in 
Britain. The Society conducts a socialistic propa¬ 
ganda, and like all other brands of socialism, its 
beliefs are being modified very frequently. There 
will come a day when social reform will be social¬ 
ism, and socialism will cease to exist as even a 
semblance of a party; for its work will be done and 
its ideals practically attained or bettered in a prac¬ 
tical way by the real workers of all classes of the 
world, by the organized co-operative band of lead¬ 
ers and doers, workers with minds and hands all 
functioning under true democracy, void of mili¬ 
tarism, corrupt politics, oppression and the social 
diseases of poverty and vice. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Syndicalism 


S YNDICALISM, an original French move¬ 
ment and a revolutionary brand of socialism, 
is a compound of anarchism, trade unionism 
and socialism. It has been termed “the hybrid 
offspring of anarchism and trade unionism,” but 
like socialism, it is of variable creed and under cer¬ 
tain settings has been allied with many extreme 
forms of socialism. Syndicalism advocates com¬ 
munism, common property and a socialized indus¬ 
trial and commercial system, all in harmony with 
certain tenets of socialism; but syndicalism stands 
with anarchy for no government. It refuses to 
sanction either the giving or obeying of orders and 
inanely attempts to believe that the people will rule 
themselves by attending public meetings and unan¬ 
imously and voluntarily agreeing to a course of 
action; these meetings having no chairman and no 
parliamentary rules for discussions or debates. 
Syndicalism, like Marxian socialism, is a class 
movement, a genuine Proletarian product, and in 
this respect it differs from the latest brands of 
socialism, whose ranks are largely made up of the 
middle classes and Marx’s despised Bourgeois. 

It has been said that “Syndicalism is based on 
the conception of the ownership and control of 
each branch of industry by those working in it and 
the organization of society on the basis of occupa- 

157 


158 


SOCIALISM 


tion instead of locality.” These views are not 
unanimously accepted by its partisans, for others 
assert that it stands for communism in distribution, 
with the trade unions managing production but 
having no property in the product. 

There are no maintained, distinct political par¬ 
ties in France, and in the hodge-podge of kaleido¬ 
scopic changing of groups formed around individ¬ 
uals, socialism has blended more or less with other 
interests. It has been said of France that “Parlia¬ 
ment is an assembly of self-seeking chatterers.” 
Syndicalism, which means trade unionism in 
France, is a rebuke to all existing parties, including 
the socialists, and is an attempt to weld the work¬ 
ing classes into a homogeneous, coherent whole, 
feeling that progress depends upon the integrity 
of working class interests, not through unstable 
and hysterical politics, but through the direct force 
and overwhehning power of organized labor. 

Syndicalism contends that similarity of work 
welds men together with a bond far stronger than 
geographical residence, and they believe that men 
of one trade are more amenable to unionism than 
are different interests in one local setting in favor 
of communism. This theory of life resolves itself 
into a series of interconnected groups with the self¬ 
ish interests, peculiar to their trade, seeking with 
a Utopian spirit to promote harmony and obtain 
a collective policy which will be enthusiastically 
concurred in by all. What an ignorance of human 
nature do the promoters of socialism persistently 
express by thought and deeds! We are told that 
“public life will be wholly within the trade unions,” 


SOCIALISM 


159 


each union for itself, each union dominating its 
environment; we could more truly say, each union 
at war with its fellow unions. Why should the 
agriculturist shoulder the burdens of the masons, 
or the masons of the boilermakers? Why should 
the carpenters now being replaced by steel con¬ 
struction erectors, stand with enthusiasm for the 
union which is robbing them of their means of 
livelihood? It is said that as Marx urged a per¬ 
petual warfare between Proletariat and Bourgeois, 
so there must ever be war between workers and 
employers—an industrial war between capitalists 
and the property of capitalists, on the one hand, 
and the so-called exploited labor on the other hand. 
Marx’s violent class doctrine, repudiated by most 
modern socialists, has fallen like a mantle, there¬ 
fore, with all its revolutionary mania, on certain 
organized labor unions, who aspire with Marx to 
the attainment of the immoral and the impossible. 

Bourses du Travail were organized in French 
towns in 1892, and a Federation of such Bourses 
was formed a year later. There had been no revo¬ 
lution in France, the land of revolution, since the 
Commune of Paris in 1871, and the Federation of 
the Bourses du Travail urged and adopted the 
principle of the general strike of all trades and 
occupations as a new revolutionary weapon of the 
Proletariat. Kirkup, after stating that trade 
unions in France are organizations especially 
framed for maintaining strikes, adds: “A general, 
that is a universal strike, even of a week’s duration, 
will, it is alleged, destroy the existing scheme of 
things and the trade unions which ordered the strike 


160 


SOCIALISM 


and alone can end it, will be able to make peace 
on their own terms.” 

In 1895 the name of the Federation of Unions 
in France was changed to the General Confedera¬ 
tion of Labor. It proclaimed its absolute independ¬ 
ence of all political parties, and the previous year 
it had severed its alliance with the socialists. Act¬ 
ing under the influence of their anarchistic General 
Secretary, Pelloutier, the new party soon endorsed 
sabotage and boycott. In 1906, the Confederation 
authorized the much-heralded General Strike in 
France on the Revolutionary Labor Day, May 1st, 
but it proved a disappointing fizzle. Many at¬ 
tempts at a General Strike, agitated by insurrec¬ 
tional anarchists, have occurred, but all have ended 
as fiascos. There has been some literature written, 
depicting the horrors and potency of the General 
Strike by means of which the Middle and Upper 
Classes would be embarrassed, grievously harassed 
and ultimately starved into a condition of absolute 
submission, at which time the Proletariat, appar¬ 
ently well nurtured, strong and happy, would take 
possession of all the instruments of production and 
operate them for themselves. 

Leading socialists look with dread upon the 
General Strike, but their fear is groundless; even 
Kautsky, the revolutionist, has endeavored to dis¬ 
illusion his followers and the Proletariat of all 
nations, by saying: “It is foolish. A general strike 
in the sense that all laborers of the country, at a 
given sign, shall lay down their labor, presupposes 
a unanimity and an organization of the laborers 
which is scarcely possible in present society, and 


SOCIALISM 


161 


which if it were once attained, would be so irresist¬ 
ible that no general strike would be necessary. 
Such a strike would, however, at one stroke, render 
impossible the existence, not simply of society, but 
all existence, and that of the Proletarians long be¬ 
fore that of the capitalist, and must consequently 
collapse uselessly at just the moment when its 
revolutionary virtue began to develop.” 

Syndicalism is, therefore, a revolutionary, labor¬ 
ing class movement which advocates sabotage, boy¬ 
cott and direct action by the workers themselves, 
by means of the General Strike. The ranks include 
many rebels against all sorts and conditions of 
authority. The advocates of the movement decry 
the slow progress than can be made by politics; 
they are too anarchical to consider obtaining re¬ 
forms by voting for a leader or representative who 
will wage legitimate warfare for them as a repre¬ 
sentative of the people. They crave direct action 
and “let every man act for himself,” which, after 
all, is “each man for himself.” 

The syndicalists are not all wrong. They see 
that the dream of the socialists with the whole 
country devitalized and functioning with military 
organizations, or like a national series of Civil 
Service Bureaus, is not a pleasant picture. Yet 
they do not know exactly what they do want, other 
than that they want to rule. Competition is to 
them as much of a bete-noire , as it is to the average 
socialist. They don’t want organizations, except 
to obtain power. After that an ideal state of an¬ 
archy will prevail and they dream in an irrational, 
asinine way of an existence void of compulsion, 


162 


SOCIALISM 


discipline, or the necessity of doing anything one 
does not want to do whether it presents itself in 
the form of work or a mere diversion. 

Syndicalism has taken some root in Italy, has 
been repudiated in England, is little known in 
Germany, Russia and Spain, and is in evidence, at 
times, in our own country. It has been frequently 
said that syndicalism is the child of anarchism and 
trade unionism, and that unless both parents exist 
in one country, syndicalism cannot spring forth to 
further harass and befuddle the minds and morals 
of a people. The Industrial Workers of the World, 
known as the I. W. W., are American Syndicalists, 
and were formed in 1903 and 1904 at the Colorado 
miners’ strike. They are a menace to law and 
order and are equally opposed to the Federation 
of Labor, legitimate labor unions, stockholders and 
management of companies large or small, and the 
democracy and government of our land. Syndi¬ 
calism in America is expressed by the anarchical 
driftwood of European prejudices and hatred that 
reaches our shores. It is an organization in which 
vice and devilish malice are glorified, and it stands 
diametrically opposed to the doctrines and aspira¬ 
tions of American workers, socialists, and every 
political party. The exercise of boycott is bad 
enough, but sabotage and the destruction of prop¬ 
erty by ignorant, demented and malicious anarch¬ 
ists are so diabolical, that the spirit of our land 
cries out for the eradication of such influences of 
destruction and lawlessness. Americans are never 
syndicalists, and in dealing with anarchy and the 
I. W. W. in this country, we have to deal with 


SOCIALISM 


163 


ignorant foreigners who follow fanatical and 
frenzied organizers, like sheep. Strikes are a 
source of revenue to the promoters and agitators. 
Money is gathered into the coffers; officer succeeds 
officer and many an innocent lamb among the 
humblest and most innocent of workers, brain- 
benumbed by the mental suggestion of depraved 
orators, has been fleeced of his wool by rascals and 
wolfish agitators, who leave more suffering in their 
wake than any bucket-shop or gold-brick manip¬ 
ulators. 

The average American workman is a level¬ 
headed, worthy man, possessing a sense of honor, 
fairness and justice. He does not identify himself 
with the false gods of anarchism or socialism. He 
stands for his individuality, his right to progress, 
his inalienable privilege to assert his freedom from 
all mob and communistic socialism. The true 
worker represents true individualism; it is his boon 
and his salvation. Not one of the many ropes that 
attempt to lasso man today and draw him toward 
a miraged Utopia, is actuated by the power of love, 
brotherly kindness and mutual affection which 
alone can materially change existing conditions for 
the better. Power and vice seem to be sempiternal; 
but they cannot possibly be so, for they are not the 
result of creation, but rather the cause of error. 

Man has ever been both individually and collec¬ 
tively the author of his own misfortunes. Poverty 
came into the world when love was absent, and 
vice was born when indolence masqueraded as 
work. Denunciations and anathemas will do noth¬ 
ing to regenerate the world. Heartless systems of 


164 


SOCIALISM 


anarchy, economics, socialism, revolutions and 
syndicalism will do no good, but rather increase 
the evil; for the world needs for the redemption 
of mankind, not outward and much heralded po¬ 
litical movements, but inner convictions expressed 
by sympathy and love. The imperfections of indi¬ 
vidual man, the absence of the true spirit of life 
in man, are reflected by the sins and sorrows of the 
world. The finest Christian plans of socialism 
may eliminate poverty for a while, but it would in¬ 
crease laziness, the source of vice. The imperfec¬ 
tions of any social system will be evidenced by its 
by-products of poverty and evil. Humanity ex¬ 
pressed as socialized individuality will gradually, 
by universal laws, remove all blotches from our 
civilization, and such ideals can only be attained 
by the leavening of all humanity with the true 
spirit of love and the elimination of all evil lurking 
under the garb of social movements, full of prom¬ 
ises but void of possible fulfilment and definite 
progress. 


CHAPTER XIX 


Ethical Individualism 

T HE practical distinction between individual¬ 
ism and socialism is necessarily one of de¬ 
gree, but as erroneously used by modern 
society, each term carries with it the reproach of 
its opponents. Individualism in political philos¬ 
ophy is the theory of government according to 
which the good of the state consists in the well¬ 
being and free initiative of each of the component 
members. Socialism subordinates the individual 
to the community; the state is supreme and the 
individual exists for the state. Individualism 
maintains that the state exists for the benefit of 
the individual, although individualism is not neces¬ 
sarily egoism. As the socialist is not necessarily 
hostile to the individual, so the individual is not 
antagonistic to society, but rather contemplates an 
idealistic condition where each man will be enabled 
to make the most of his peculiar inherent forces, 
and where society, by the environmental reaction 
upon these individualistic forces, will develop and 
draw from each man his best thoughts and work, 
and this not only for the good and happiness of 
the individual, but for the still greater good and 
lasting benefit of mankind. 

A true individual is a conscientious, altruistic 
being, whose heart beats in synchronism with his 
fellows; he advocates co-operation, helpfulness and 


165 


166 


SOCIALISM 


human support from all to all, but he is opposed 
to state interference with individual freedom when¬ 
ever, in his opinion, it can be avoided. Individual¬ 
ism is a much abused word; it has been used in a 
pronounced materialistic sense and also to express 
a mental attitude permeated with repulsive and 
mawkish egoism. Extreme, unrestrained individ¬ 
ualism, the limit of the positive pole, is pure 
anarchy, while the limit of the negative pole is a 
gelatinous, social nothingness, absolutely void of 
personality or character. In every well-balanced 
man there must be a happy combination of indi¬ 
vidualistic and societarian properties, and, at times, 
a strong individualist may be constrained to advo¬ 
cate laws and procedure which will conflict with 
individual freedom. Thomas Hobbes, a type of 
individualist, vigorously supported absolute gov¬ 
ernment as necessary to the well-being of indi¬ 
viduals. 

True individualism considers the perpetual ben¬ 
efits of the race, the obtaining of the maximum 
output and efficiency from each member of the 
Body Social; it is concerned with the teaming 
together of men, not as numbered units, but as in¬ 
dividuals, all of whom must be permeated with the 
spirit of enthusiasm for achievement, call it com¬ 
petition, or what you will. Individualism opposes 
the tenets of any class or political body that would 
rob man of his opportunity to excel and rise to 
any pinnacle of worthy attainment. Sluggards 
approve of socialized industry, but not workers. 
Ambitious and active individuals denounce social¬ 
ism; but indolent, drowsy loafers talk and dream 


SOCIALISM 


167 


of it. Individualism stands as the watch-word of 
progress, of world advancement, of genius and of 
worth-while accomplishment. Socialism may ap¬ 
peal to the judgment of the philanthropic but im¬ 
practical man; it may seem to be the means of 
righting the existent social wrongs, but its hopes 
are not real substance. Socialism interests the 
flotsam and jetsam of the surging waves of human 
life; it is in its last analysis but the antithesis of 
progressive evolution. In this country, at least, it 
is an unnecessary doctrine; the only ones who need 
its protection being the unfit, the lazy and the in¬ 
different. Toilers and drudges gravitate toward 
communism with its false hopes of equality. 
Workers, be they poor, in moderate circumstances 
or rich, stand together, a firm, united body, for 
that individuality which means opportunity, use¬ 
fulness and efficient service. 

The health of the state depends on the exertion 
of individuals, first for the benefit of themselves 
and their small connected social body, and ulti¬ 
mately for the good of all. Individualism is op¬ 
posed to the filling of any office by political means, 
and it maintains that fitness and experience should 
be found positively satisfactory before any man is 
permitted to assume the responsibility of an office. 
The incumbents occupying the majority of our 
political positions today are crimes against democ¬ 
racy and the good sense of the American people. 
Individualism preaches the Survival of the Fittest 
as it applies to sheer personal merit and adapta¬ 
bility for the job; and decries the political practice 
of finding jobs for henchmen, wire-pullers and that 


168 


SOCIALISM 


class of human derelicts considered useful at elec¬ 
tions, but at no other time. Dickens’s Circumlo¬ 
cution Office was comparatively simple and efficient 
as compared with many American mazes of ineffi¬ 
ciency, brazen in their uselessness and corrupt in 
their dealings. These politicians loathe the appear¬ 
ance of work and take fiendish delight, at times, in 
the infliction of obstacles to mar every attempt on 
the part of legitimate enterprises to obtain action 
from what is but a disgusting, chaotic mass—a 
travesty on organization and a reflection on the 
intelligence of any community that will permit 
such deplorable conditions to exist. 

True individualism would clean house, scatter 
degenerates, the morally weak and lazy; and in 
the place of a burlesque on business, install an or¬ 
ganization that would stand individually upon 
merit and function co-operatively in the service of 
fellow-citizens and patrons. To reduce the cost of 
living, we should commence with political organiza¬ 
tions; taxes would then fall, obstructions to legiti¬ 
mate business would be removed, and the moral 
tone of a community would be raised. 

Individuality, the true self-respect of man, the 
ideal enthroned within man, will regenerate a race; 
political parties never will. If the representatives 
and senators we send to Washington were abso¬ 
lutely honest, with true ideals, working with an eye 
single only to the highest welfare of their country, 
we would not need to care whether the party in 
power were Democratic or Republican. When the 
party is enthroned, instead of the people, then indi¬ 
vidualism has been overthrown, and with individ- 


SOCIALISM 


169 


ualism go the good of the people and the highest 
interests of the land. As long as we have arrogant 
and ignorant upstarts in Congress, appointed on 
committees and commingling with men of sterling 
worth and honest motives, just so long will we 
have sub-committees who do not desire to hear 
anything that does not harmonize with their pre¬ 
conceived program, and truth will remain unheard. 
As long as an honest business man is welcome in 
Washington and our own State capital, if he ap¬ 
pears to substantiate the prearranged policy of the 
administration and is insultingly branded as a de¬ 
praved lobbyist if he protests against the injustice 
of the administration (which is usually void of real, 
practical knowledge on the subject before it), 
then just so long are individualism, justice and 
honor crucified and the party in power is an Oli¬ 
garchy void of democracy. The belief that our 
republic, under these conditions, represents the 
Rule of the People, is sheer mockery. 

We may conform with the wishes of the major¬ 
ity, we may function in harmony with the party 
in political power, whether they represent a true 
majority or not; but no outward conformity which 
is but a sign of social training and the suppression 
of the true individual, can change or remove the 
inner feeling of protest to all that our souls abhor. 
The great call of the century is for individuals; 
men who will think, reason and act; men above the 
crowd, the mob, the fawning, vacillating sheep of 
humanity. Individuality will cleanse our politics 
and enthrone truth. We have been created as 
individuals, we shall pass beyond as individuals, 


170 


SOCIALISM 


why not live as individuals? “Before man made 
us citizens, great nature made us men.” 

True individualism is well expressed by Tenny¬ 
son: 

“But while 

I breathe Heaven’s air, and Heaven looks down 
at me, 

And smiles at my best meanings, I remain 
Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul.” 

Why belittle mankind with thoughts of social¬ 
ism? Man is a social creature, but he was created 
as a dominant individual. He was made to love, 
to serve, to work. Every man is created differently 
from all his fellows; he has been given a person¬ 
ality and an individuality, all his own, unique and 
invaluable. He who would mold men to com¬ 
mon form or act, blasphemes the Creator. Man’s 
power in the world among his fellows is due to 
his difference from his fellows. Eliminate, subdue 
or crush out these differences and progress ceases. 

The state should ever strive to maintain such 
conditions and environments around all individuals 
as will give free exercise to human faculties. Man¬ 
kind has passed from slavery to serfdom, and in 
the Middle Ages feudalism became a paternal form 
of government. With the breaking up of the 
Guilds and the Industrial Revolution, came indi¬ 
vidualism—man’s highest estate. Socialism tends 
to throw back man to communism, the beginning 
of all collective life. Individualism will be deep¬ 
ened, purified and glorified, but it will never be 
supplanted by any other form of life. 


SOCIALISM 


171 


True individualism, we have maintained, is op¬ 
posed to anarchism as well as to socialism. It is 
not revolutionary, but it believes in reform, inward 
first, then from the inner man outward through the 
aura of human influence. Individualism is not as 
socialism asserts,—unrestrained, licensed or unre¬ 
stricted commercial competition of combative indi¬ 
viduals. Cervantes used to say “Every man for 
himself and God for us all.” During the days of 
severe competition, when selfishness seemed over¬ 
powering and the finer and nobler part of man 
seemed numb, this saying was modified to,—“Every 
man for himself and the devil take the hinder- 
most.” The Reign of Oppression in the search for 
gold, has occupied only a short time in the evolu¬ 
tion of man; it followed a period of centuries of 
attempts to stifle knowledge, crown superstition and 
hide from man the true God. 

We have emerged from the era of intensified 
selfishness and during the period of adjustment, 
the perfect compatibility of nobility of soul and 
honest business success will be exemplified and 
proven by the individualists in society. The morals 
and honesty of business men are greater than ever 
before in the history of the world. To be a great 
and lasting success today in the much abused busi¬ 
ness world, a man must be honest and true, a real 
individual, radiating confidence, sincerity and true, 
not assumed, friendships. Individuals can be loyal 
workers who function co-operatively in an organi¬ 
zation. Lordship in business no longer exists, but 
leadership is there; and the loyalty and respect of 
the individual and society are for the leaders who 


172 


SOCIALISM 


function primarily for the benefit of humanity and 
not for their own material aggrandizement. All 
men are either servants of humanity or hindrances 
to progress. 

As individualism asserts itself and people come 
into real self-consciousness, wars will cease, for the 
idea of war will be absurd to people who substitute 
“love” for “hate” in their individual and national 
creeds. The socialists of all the European coun¬ 
tries, millions strong, could not prevent the horrible 
war now raging there, but nations of individual 
thinkers and co-operative workers would not have 
permitted despotic rule to exist or any other type 
of organization that would permit such an out¬ 
rageous attack on Occidental civilization. War is 
indicative of a lack of self-government, it repre¬ 
sents the stupidity of fettered individualism. 

It has been said that the doctrine of co-operation 
is the middle ground between competition and 
socialism, but this is not so. Competitive co-op¬ 
eration is known in some of the most prosperous 
of American industries. Individualism is competi¬ 
tion, but it is far more than competition; at times 
it borders on socialism, but it is infinitely greater 
and truer than socialism. Individualism is always 
co-operation with kindred forces, and it is pro¬ 
nounced opposition to contrary forces. True indi¬ 
vidualism is always creative; it performs the work 
of the Eternal in the humble spirit of service for 
the advancement of mankind. It is the ultra- 
rationalistic spirit of progress in man. Individ¬ 
ualism, although enchained for ages, has given the 
world its civilization. Kings, potentates and rulers 


SOCIALISM 


178 


of men, stripped of all their pompous regalia, have 
been great only as their individualism has made 
them great. 

Individual freedom was first enjoyed by man as 
a reaction against privileged restriction. It will 
continue to be the ferment of democracy until the 
whole be leavened. True, whole-souled individual¬ 
ism is the consummation of social evolution. Civili¬ 
zation commenced with communism; it will reach 
its highest development with true individualism, 
but it will be an individualism where the spirit of 
man predominates, where pure religion rules, not 
as a superstitious belief or creed of finite dogmas, 
but as the great Cosmic force of life, creation and 
progress, which uses the instruments of its creation 
for the glorification of its works and for the prog¬ 
ress and development of the great universal plan. 

“I trust in God—the right shall be the right 
And other than the wrong, while He endures; 

I trust in my own soul, that can perceive 
The outward and the inward, Nature’s good and 
God’s.” — Browning. 


Index 


PAGE 

Anarchism.22, 25-35, 37-44 

Anarchism, Ethical . 36 

Anarchism, Philosophic. 37 

Aristotle, Quoted on Equality. 54 

Arkwright, Richard. 117 

Assassinations. 34 

Atlantis, Legend of. 54 

—Story by Bacon.55-57 

—Story by Parry.93-95 

Bacon, Francis, Quoted on his Utopia. 55 

Bakunin, Mikail. 28 

Belloc, Hilaire, on Rousseau. 19 

Bernstein, Edward . 154 

Blanc, Louis . 99 

“Bloody Sunday". 33 

Bourgeoisie.4-7, 105, 114-119 

Brisbane, Albert . 81 

Brooks, J. G., on Communism. 67 

Burke, Edmund, on Service. 141 

Cabet, Etienne.81, 97 

Capitalism . 151 

Capitalism—Ancient times . 112 

Class Distinction.5, 105, 126 

Color as an Equality Factor. 82 

Communalism . 52 

Communism.52-62, 63 

Communism in Greece. 113 

Communism in North America.76-81 

Communist Manifesto.104, 120 

Communists, Sectarian.78-79 

Competition, Value of.134-138, 146 

Contrat Social . 19 

De Bries, on Plant “Explosion”. 8 

Democracy.49-51 

Democracy in America.122-123 

Distribution of Wealth. 136 

“Dunciad,” Quoted from. 41 

Education as Solution. 123 


174 








































INDEX 


175 

PAGE 

Emerson, R. W., on Progress. 13 

—On Reformers. 43 

Enfantine, B. P. 70 

Engels, Friedrich, on Future State. 27 

—On Name of Party. 104 

Equality—Based on Birth. 84 

—Based on Class. 5 , 105, 126 

—Based on Color. 82 

—Based on Sex. 90 

—Based on Uniformity. 84 

—Based on Work. 86 

Equality—Political .'. 90 

Ethical Anarchism. 36 

Evolution, Defined . 1 

—Cosmic Answer. 11 

—Forward Movement. 12 

—Law of Progress. 9 

—Progress toward an Ideal. 24 

Fabian Society. 155 

Family .151-154 

Feudalism . 113 

Fourier, Francois.71-75 

Fourierist Communism in North America. 81 

France in Revolution.17-21 

French Revolution. 16-21, 49 

General Council of the International. 28 

George, Henry, on Distribution of Wealth. 137 

Gladstone, W. E., on Socialism. 141 

Godin, J. B. A. 129 

Hague Congress. 28 

Half Truths . 11 

Heine, Heinrich, on Danger of Communism. 6 

Held, Adolf, on Individual Subordination. 132 

Henry IV, Quoted from. 21 

Henry VIII of England, Alluded to. 5 

—and Sir Thomas More. 59 

Hillquit, Morris, on Weitling. 98 

I. W. W. 162 

Icarians .81, 97 

Individualism.89-91, 165-173 

—In Politics. 167 

Industry, Socialized. 144 

International, General Council of. 28 

International Social Democratic Alliance. 29 

Janet, Paul, on Distribution of Wealth. 131 

Jefferson, Thomas, on Equality.47, 76 
















































176 INDEX 

PAGE 

Kautsky, K. J., on Revolutionary Origin of European 

Countries. 7 

—On Changing Standard of Life. 148 

—On Strikes. 160 

Kelly, Edmond.135,143 

Kirkup, Quoted on Nihilism. 30 

—On Anarchistic Types. 35 

—On Saint-Simon . 71 

Kropotkin, Prince . 33 

Labor Exploitation.115, 119 

Laissez-faire Doctrine .103, 133 

Lassalle, Ferdinand. 127 

Laveleye, E. L. V., on Socialism as an Equality Movement 131 
Liebknecht, Wilhelm, on Infallibility of the Socialists. . . 123 

Louis XVI of France. 17 

Luddites, Mentioned . 115 

Lycurgus, on Equality. 54 

Machinery and Socialism. 115 

Manifesto of the Communist Party.104, 120 

Marie Antoinette . 17 

Marriage in Socialism.151-154 

Marx, Karl, His Doctrine of Socialism.104-108, 121, 154 

—On Revolution. 3 

Menger, Quoted on Equality. 54 

Mill, J. S., on Owen Communism. 64 

More, Thomas.57-60 

Morris, William .60-61 

Municipal Ownership.141-144 

Netchaiev. 31 

New Harmony, Ind.67, 80 

Nihilism. 30 

Owen, Robert.63-68, 128 

—In North America . 80 

Ownership, Public .139-144 

Parry and his “Scarlet Empire”.93-95 

Phalanges . 72 

Philosophic Anarchism. 37 

Plato, on Communism. 53 

Political Parties and Democracy. 51 

Politics and Individualism. 167 

Pope, Alexander on Anarchy. 41 

Proletariat..4-6, 106 

Proudhon, P. J.25-27 

Radicalism .45-47 

Radicalism versus Anarchism. 46 

Rappist Community. 78 













































INDEX 


177 

PAGE 

Rationalism .47-49 

Reformers .12, 42-43 

Religion in Socialism. 154 

Revolution, Defined . 1-2 

Revolution—French.16-21, 49 

—U. S. War of, Alluded to. 20 

Rodbertus, K. J., on Socialist Types of 1850. 6 

—On Ideal State. 101 

Roscher, W. G. F., on Ideal Socialism. 132 

Rousseau, J. J.18-19 

Russia.30-35 

St. Bernard, on Reformers. 12 

Saint-Simon, Henri de.69-71 

“Scarlet Empire,” by Parry.93-95 

Schaffle, A. E. F., on Public Ownership through Socialism 131 

Scientific Socialism.97, 104, 111, 120 

Sectarian Communists .78-79 

Sex Equality. 90 

Shakers . 78 

Shakespeare, on Revolution. 21 

Social Contract. 19 

Social Evolution.4, 109 

Social Reform.. .4, 11-12 

Social Revolution.2-4, 14 

Social Transformation. 3 

Socialism, Defined.102, 131 

Socialism, see also Communism. 

Socialism, Scientific.97, 104, 111, 120 

Socialism, Scientific, see also Communism. 

Solon, on Democracy. 54 

Spencer, Herbert, on Socialism.109-111 

Syndicalism .157-164 

—In France .158-162 

—In the United States. 162 

Tennyson, Alfred, on Individualism. 170 

Tolstoy, Leo. 34 

Turgenief, Ivan, on the Nihilists. 30 

Utopia .57-59 

Utopian Socialism, see Communism. 

“Voyage to Icaria” . 97 

War as Anarchy. 35 

Wealth, Distribution of. 136 

Weitling, Wilhelm . 98 

































































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